Maple Cheesecake and Charred Pears: No Cracks!

This was my first official homemade cheesecake, and I'm proud to say there were no cracks! Granted, there were definitely some small air bubbles in the batter because I turned the mixer to high for 5 seconds before I remembered that was probably a bad idea...but still! Even if there were cracks to be found, I guess it wouldn't have mattered too much since I covered the whole thing with pears anyways.

Being me, I couldn't aspire to make a ~normal~ cheesecake for my first cheesecake attempt, but no some gorgeous one I found on the internet made with maple syrup and the most beautiful burnt pears delicately laid out on top in a circular pattern. While I don't think I "nailed it," I definitely didn't fail. The pears on top were all supposed to be 1/8th inch thick, but unless you have a mandolin and super skillz, it seems pretty impossible to get evenly thin slices of pears, which is why I have a smattering of burnt and not-so-burnt slices on top. I think that's a sign that I probably shouldn't go into anything surgical in the future.

 Speaking of future and completely not food related, I just wanted to share with the world that I've been accepted into some medical school programs after several months of interviewing (and one more month to go), so there's a lot in my life I'm very happy and thankful for at the moment. It's a great feeling knowing that you'll actually get to pursue what you want to do and that all your hard work paid off and that the faith that wonderful, intelligent randos put into you was worth it. Ok not randos, but you get the gist of that incredibly run-on sentence.

Anyways, back to food. While the cheesecake did taste, as I quote my sister, "pretty good" (which is a huge compliment from her), it didn't actually taste like maple cheesecake? More like a normal cheesecake, which was a bit disappointing. After all, what's the point of putting in some real grade A kirkland signature maple syrup into your batter if you can't actually taste it? The crust was also supposed to be made of digestive biscuits, but since we're in America and shopping at Vons, I only found butter cookies. I think there must have been salt in the cookies to begin with because the crust ended up being a little too salty, and a little short. Maybe double the crust recipe next time since more is probably better than not enough, even if it looks ~rustic~.

Recipe from SippitySup

Holiday Cookies: Seasonal Seasonings and an Apology

Contrary to my incredibly passive personality that some may consider weak-sauce, I can be incredibly judgmental about things. Like how sometimes food blogs will just go MIA for months on end, and then randomly return. Or just disappear and never come back. I do a lot of judging of online food people it seems (see food photo ramblings in earlier posts). And yet, it seems the more I judge, the more I end up doing the exact same thing. So clearly I need to cut the world of internet people some slack here (someone write up a Pride and Prejudice- Food Blogger Edition or something).

Anyways, while I haven't been posting recently due to a variety of excuses I can make, I have been baking and cooking regularly. I made things for thanksgiving, I failed spectacularly on some meringues, and even made a pot of soup large enough feed a small country's army. But for now, lets just focus on the holiday season that is coming up.



Even though I don't follow or believe the religious affiliations of Christmas, and nowadays not much of the whole gift giving consumerism thing, I still find holiday music and holiday decorations to be fantastic. Not so much nativity scenes, but I'm all about the lights, wreaths, and big fancy trees in all the buildings. It just makes everything so cheery regardless of what you may or may not believe. Then again, I've grown up in the US where Christmas traditions has become deeply embedded in just the general majority culture without much thought of exactly where they came from or why we do these things. I mean, the way we count years is also based off the birth of a guy? And presents come from a clearly unhealthy man?


Obviously being a food blog, I am mainly about the cookies, not the historical accuracy or cultural implications of the holidays. Ok, so that was totally grammatically incorrect, because I'm literally a person. Not a food blog. All of that is rather fascinating, and something I could/should google if I really wanted to delve into it.



Anyways, words. Look at these gingerbread and sugar cookies. Side note: molasses tastes terrible on its own even though gingerbread is delicious. I think I'll try making a gingerbread house at some point in the future--one of the classic holiday baking projects I have yet to complete.



Gingerbread recipe from food.com.
Sugar Cookie recipe from the kitchn.
Royal Icing from Bake at 350 (I used the one batch and was able to decorate with plenty of colors with no problems).

Banana Chocolate Chip Pancakes: A Week Long Devotion

Do you ever build something up in your head to be this great, wonderful thing, only to find that when you've finally achieved that item, that its just an utter disappointment? And not because the thing sucks or anything. Rather, it can be pretty great objectively. But nothing can compete with the nonsense if your imagination. Except for yourself. When you just ~let it go~.

Well, yea, I kinda did that with pancakes this week. Banana chocolate chip pancakes to be exact. It all started with some depressingly cold weather, that ended up being only mildly cold later this week. The cold weather, plus, absolutely no desire to really think about my meals this week resulted in a very narrow mindset- pancakes, pancakes, pancakes.

So when I finally did get around to making these pancakes, needless to say there was a lot riding on them. I mean, I was eating american cheese. Yea, that plastic wrapped, floppy goodness thats really only good like once every 4 years when a wave of nostalgia hits for wonderbread and plastic cheese. And I didn't even have wonderbread! But thats another story.

After thinking about it, I believe this may have been the first time I've made pancakes from scratch. We usually have a very large, costco-sized bag of Krusteaz mix at home, so it delighted me to see the bubbles and rise that came out of these pancakes. I did substitute half the flour for whole wheat though, so my pancakes seemed to deflate quite a bit when I flipped.

And if you're noticing the rather er, burnt, tinge on these pancakes? Well, lets just say my stove has basically a very hot setting, and an off setting most of the time. Banana chocolate chip-flavor wise, the banana didn't really come through. Not sure if thats because I used frozen bananas or what. The pancakes did taste better the next day when I had them for breakfast. Anyways, pancake experimentation will continue the next time I harbor a week-long desire for ~pancakes~.

Recipe from All Recipes.

Pumpkin Sugar Cookies: Timely Halloween Post

The stars have aligned. Not only was I on top of the whole seasonal baking thing, but Halloween has fortuitously fallen on the day of my blog entry. So firstly, Happy Halloween and here have a foodie related-themed-tumblr photo.

ANYWAYS. While this post really should stop after that wonderful advice from Ina Garten, we'll continue on with cookies while not store-bought, also not summoned directly from the gates of cookie-doom. Unless you count my tiny little apartment kitchen as a doomsday scenario.

It's a little tragic (yet totally understandable) why as one gets older trick-o-treating no longer becomes a thing you participate in. Or rather, the role should transition from trick-o-treater to treat-giver. But there's that thing called college dorm living that seems to take a sharp turn into the lands of night club Halloween, which is significantly less sweet or cute. But I suppose has it's own charms. Mainly when it comes to punny costumes. Like 50 shades of gray. Or black mail. Or a fork in the road. Half of these were taken from my sister's current struggle to find 4 different Halloween costumes to be honest.



Since I don't exactly live in suburbia (yet), or an apartment full of small families, decorating Halloween-themed cookie is probably the closest I'll get to doing something juvenile for Halloween. The ~awesome~ thing about these cookies is that they aren't just normal sugar cookies with a sprinkle of vanilla and a dash of lemon zest. Rather, in the name of Fall spirit, they're ~pumpkin~ flavored.

And not just pumpkin spiced flavored, but pumpkin spiced AND pumpkin butter flavored. So yes, there is some real pumpkins in there. Pretty meta for those pumpkin decorated cookies. I actually didn't like the few pumpkin flavored sugar cookie recipes I found online, so I ended up modifying the same sugar cookie recipe I used for the Doctor Who cookies for these. Luckily, the cookies worked out really well, and I'm probably way more proud of these cookies than I really should be.

Bonus points if anyone can spot the nerdy/fandom-related cookies amongst the midst of normal Halloween cookies and anatomically inaccurate skeletons.

 

Sugar Cookies via The Kitchn with the following modifications:

-substitute almond and lemon zest for 2 teaspoons of pumpkin spice.

-add about 1 tablespoon of pumpkin butter to softened cream cheese.

Royal Icing via Bake at 350.

Orange Creamscicle Frozen Yogurt

When it comes to having bad weeks or being sad, I think its always useful to have some ice cream around. Not like an entire freezer full of emergency Ben and Jerry flavors (though you're certainly welcome to that lifestyle if you would like), but like one or two solid ice creams you can grab a scoop or two as you mope through it all.


Of course, I might only be saying this because it gives me an excuse/reason to justify my continuous ice cream making. Not that you need an excuse to make ice cream, please. Though, orange creamsicle isn't exactly the type of ice cream or frozen yogurt one usually draws to for moping. And if you're going to froyo as your moping food, you're probably doing something wrong.



Orange creamsicle needs to have a renaissance. As a kid, we'd literally buy these huge bulk sized bags of creamsicle popsicles. They were the best. Icy, sweet orange juice on the outside. Soft creamy vanilla on the inside. And when it all starts slowly melting and mixing in that way only popsicles determined to drip all over the driveway do? Perfection.

My recent foray into the world of frozen yogurt may be related to my growing laziness at the worst possible time in terms of things I need to focus on in my life and work. That aside, frozen yogurt is literally the easiest thing ever. Just some sugar, yogurt, juice, whisk it all together. Add a dash of lemon and salt for tartness. Chill for like 10 minutes. Then churn churn churn. It definitely suits my minimal work style at the moment.
My frozen yogurt ended up with semi-large chunks of grated orange peel. Mainly because I don't actually have a grater or microzester but rather just a vegetable peeler and a knife. But I kinda like the bitterness you get from a small chunk of orange zest in this ice cream.

Bonus notinthekitchenoronatable photo because #naturallight is a thing people are into. I might have to stop making fun of people to set up absurd food photo shots on old crates because you know, I'm becoming one of them.

Recipe via the one and only Serious Eats.

White Wine Frozen Yogurt: Not Cersei

This is literally the opposite of Cersei. The opposite of that red wine berry sorbet I made a few months ago. Aside from the whole white wine thing, the fact that this is frozen yogurt means Cersei probably detests it with a burning passion. Probably reminds her too much of snow.

Being the well groomed adult I am, the only wine/beer/whatever glass I have is this fantastic Game of Thrones one. Not that I'm having large dinner parties where this is a problem or anything given my n=1 lifestyle at the moment.

This frozen yogurt is great. The white wine flavor is pretty strong at first, but it matches well with the tangy yogurt base. Plus, there's no egg tempering, and custard making, so it takes all of 5 minutes to mix it all together and start churning it.

It being October, it seems inevitable that seem form of pumpkin should leak into one of my posts (or be entirely dedicated to it), so lo and behold here we have it. Pumpkin butter and pumpkin macarons. Courtesy of our favorite trader name Joe. The macarons were decently good given that they are from a grocery store freezer aisle. The pumpkin butter is a perennial classic. There are many online who discuss their "I bought 10 jars of this stuff!" adventures, but I honestly have a hard time thinking what to put it on aside from yogurt and weird grilled cheese or peanut butter sandwiches, so I think I'm good with 1 jar to happily last me through my "ahhh must succumb to pumpkin phase."

Recipe via Serious Eats

Chocolate Lavender Ice Cream: Flower Power

I've slowly become increasingly resentful of my dedication to the world of food blogging. The part where you take pictures that is. The thing about working in research is that 5 PM is not a set in stone end of the work day hour. So sometimes its a bit later, which combined with fall/winter means darkness by the time I get around to actually taking pictures. The great thing about research is that I could theoretically just leave whenever, like at 3 PM. But I don't like the thought of myself with that much power.

That being said, even with questionable lighting, its not like I'm trying to make it onto foodgawker or get named one of Saveur's top food blogs of the year, so even with unpleasant shadows and bright yellow lights, its still fun. Though its so easy to get carried away into wanting to be ~food blog famous~. But I have other goals and aspirations I can aim to excel in. Food photography? Not so much.

As you can tell, my obsession with incorporating lavender into literally everything continues. I swear I'm going to have enough lavender to last for the next 20 years even if I do add lavender to every single recipe. If you're wondering, those flecks of green are pistachios, but chocolate lavender pistachio ice cream seems like a mouthful, but the pistachios are definitely a nice touch and a nice distraction if you're honestly getting sick of lavender like a certain someone typing this.

Even with my waning interest in lavender though, this was still a really great ice cream. Especially if you're looking to serve something esoteric. If you're not, this chocolate ice cream itself is super rich. It tasted more like fudge ice cream than chocolate ice cream. I'm personally very picky about chocolate in that the richer it is the better. So this chocolate ice cream was right up my alley. If you're not so into rich, dense, dark chocolate, I would suggest another recipe.

Chocolate lavender ice cream recipe from The Wholesome Pursuit, with ~1/4 cup of chopped, lightly roasted pistachios mixed in. Original chocolate ice cream recipe from David Lebovitz's The Perfect Scoop. Also, if anyone wants to buy me a present at some point, hint hint.