RECIPE | White Chocolate Red Velvet Cake Mix Cookies

T'was the week of finals and with a gift exchange the next day, I wanted to make something from scratch but I was short on time so I busted out the cake/cookie mix. If you're looking to whip up some quick yet amazing cookies , read on!

RECIPE | (Vegan!) Chocolate Espresso Pot de Creme In A Mug

It's summer. It's hot. I'm craving pot de creme but I don't want to turn on the oven in this sweltering weather. While I'm neither vegetarian nor vegan, I actually don't consume a lot of dairy in my house so I don't keep heavy cream on hand. I wasn't specifically looking for a vegan version, but a strategic web search yielded this awesome recipe, credited to the Detoxinista, that introduced me to the *magic* that is cashew cream! Since I'm pretty much the only one who eats sweets in my family, I opted to adapt this recipe for a single serving in a mug!

RECIPE | Banana Nilla Wafer Pudding

Great as a quick single serving dessert or for a large crowd, this delicious 3-ingredient dessert is super easy and no-bake! I especially find myself craving this during summer because it's nice and cool coming straight out of the fridge. Don't mind me if I just eat the whole pan in one sitting...

RECIPE | Pandan Honeycomb Cake (Banh Bo Nuong)

Guess what guys? I'm about to post a semi-failed recipe. Bánh Bò Nướng is another chewy (pandan optional) Vietnamese snack/dessert. Its most distinguishing feature is its honeycomb-like texture...which I unfortunately failed to reproduce here :( It was still delicious, however, so I decide to share the recipe with you anyway along with some tips in the hopes that one of you will have luck making this! This recipe is from my Chinese tutor's father, who worked as a Vietnamese pastry chef in France.

*Note: I was making a double batch when I took photos, so don't flip out if your ingredients are significantly less!

Honeycomb-less honeycomb cake? :(

DIY | Mini Whisk Necklace

I'm always a fan of wearables that both show your passion are quirky conversation starters (see my knitter's necklace DIY). Although I often don't have the chance to update my "things to bake" part of my blog, I still consider baking as one of my favorite hobbies.

RECIPE | Pandan Coconut Mochi

I made Pandan Coconut Mochi for Chinese New Year a couple weeks ago. For those of you unfamiliar with pandan and mochi, this probably looks like an unappetizing squishy green blob...but I assure you that this is absolutely amaazing!

Pandan comes from extracting the leaves of the Pandan plant and its flavor is somewhat like a mixture of vanilla and coconut. Mochi is typically an Asian sweet made with glutinous rice flour with a springy, chewy texture.

Traditionally coconut mochi lies more along the Vietnamese spectrum of sweets and usually doesn't include the pandan. Feel free to omit it if you wish though I personally think the pandan brings out the flavor of the coconut as well :)

[RECIPE] Rosemary Onion Focaccia

Behold! A wild recipe has appeared! :)

My oven's finally been fixed so I'm able to bake again! Super excited to share this one with you today! My sister had this Biology project studying properties of yeast via baking bread, so of course I was delegated to help. I was searching for a recipe with the least amount of ingredients possible since I was sort of tired that day, but with something more unique than just a plain loaf. I came across this savory recipe courtesy of Smoky Wok and it came out awesome! Apologies in advance for the dark pictures; my kitchen doesn't have great lighting :/

Looks like I've been spelling "focaccia" wrong...whoops!

RECIPE | Super Shiny Legit Baklava

Major apologies kiddos! I've been busy lately and haven't had time to post/do anything for my woefully neglected blog :(

I've only recently rekindled my affection for this honey-soaked Greek/Turkish/Mediterranean/Middle Eastern sweet after having had Hayat's Kitchen's amaaazing baklava (their food's good too, kids; will get around to the review one day :P).

Amazingly, there are a lot of ways that baklava can be made wrong and that's probably why a lot of people don't prefer it. I myself have had my share of sickeningly-sweet drippingly-syrupy baklava that hurt my teeth terribly. Browsing around the good ol' interwebs, all the recipes I ran into had absolutely ridiculous amounts of sugar added, which causes you to end up losing baklava's characteristic honey flavor. I'm no baklava expert but I'm sure people wouldn't enjoy something that would be painful to eat, so I made up my own recipe drastically reducing the sugar/butter used.

This recipe came out of a spontaneous midnight baking session (...as usual!) and I wasn't able to photograph the process step-by-step...so you're going to have to take my word for now via my single phone-quality photo that this came out Dericious with a capital D.

Super Shiny Legit Baklava

(Makes ~40 pieces)

RECIPE | Fancy Nancy French Toast

My first encounter with French toast consumption is (gasp) out of a Trader Joe's freezer box. I never really had legit French toast until my college days where the selection of Americanized breakfast foods, and the presence of strawberry stuffed French toast, pretty much blew me away (go Pippin Commons and your outstanding waffle station!). As a self-proclaimed picky-eater extraordinaire, my idea of the perfect French toast contains crispity crunchity edges and a carmelized warm non-mushy custard-y center all doused in a healthy heaping of syrup and powdered sugar. If I were ever to have my own TV show like Tyler's Ultimate, I'd probably name it Picky-Eater Extraordinaire and curse my younger self for thinking Trader Joe's French toast was as good as it's gonna get. Although I've come a long way from TJs with a renewed appreciation for this classic American breakfast delicacy, alas, I have in my travels yet to come across my "ultimate" French toast...so I scoured the Interwebs and found a recipe suuuper close to what I was looking for.

Fancy Nancy French Toast

(recipe credit to Food Wishes)
(Serves 6)

RECIPE | Mini Hong Kong Egg Tarts (蛋塔)

*12/11/2013: I've made some changes to the custard recipe. It turned out sooo much eggier! :D

I personally am not a fan of Dim Sum or Yum Cha (the Chinese version of teatime and finger foods) since there's never anything that I like to eat...with the only highlight being the desserts. What I look forward to most is the Hong Kong Egg Tarts, or Dan Tat in Cantonese, that's basically a tart filled with egg custard.

The thing that annoys me most about restaurant egg tarts is that the traditional crispy flaky crust (reminiscent of puff pastry) makes eating them so messy...and also the fact that one order only gives you about three tiny tarts (four if you're lucky) for you to share with your whole table...boo.

So I resolved to find a good egg tart recipe so I can make a whole pan for myself. It was super difficult to find one since there aren't a whole lot of English-blogs specializing in Asian desserts, but I stumbled upon this video by DessertzHouse for egg tarts with a butter crust (no flakies!) and I tweaked the recipe a bit to even out the ratio of custard to crust. It was actually a lot harder than I thought, but the yummy result is definitely worth the effort :)