Something Not so Sweet

Initially I had wanted this blog to only be about the sweet things that I baked, but this morning I was hit with something so nostalgic and happy it was almost sweet. Breakfast is a happy deal for me; I really try to wake up when I can to make myself something nice. Although, with school and my poor sleeping habits, this is more of a dream than a reality.

This morning, I decided to skip the sleeping and opt for eating, hehe. I wanted to make something quick and easy and hopefully rather balanced. So I made omurice. Omurice is short for "omellete-rice", but in asian. It's basically rice fried with ketchup (???) and anything else you want to put in it, all wrapped in a layer of egg.

Pictured is my single-serving omurice; it's so cute! Not pictured are the sundried tomatoes and mushrooms I put in the rice.

Also not present here are the bacon, yogurt, and fruit additions to my breakfast. Yum!

And sparkling cider makes it all so lovely!

Probably a Little Anti-Climactic

As the title suggests, I don't find these as interesting as the past few posts. Today I sat back, took it easy, and made crispy, chewy chocolate chip cookies. [Yes, another SmittenKitchen recipe: Have I mentioned how much I love SK?]

Somewhere between the last time I made cookies and now, I heard that the secret to a great chewy/textured cookie lies in the ratio of saturated to unsaturated fats. Apparently the ideal ratio is 2:1 (butter ftw) or something like that. But I wouldn't know exactly since I opted not to be a food science major, way too much chemistry involved.

I decided to test this out by replacing 1/4 cup of butter with canola oil, bringing it closer to the ideal ratio though not quite. I also dialed down the temperature to 300, figuring that the oil would have a much lower smoking point. The first batch retained their ice cream scoop shape, because of course I forgot that my cookies NEVER want to spread. I think it's because I always set my oven to convection-bake (which bakes things in half the time!), but at any rate I always have to smoosh them down a tad to make them flatter.

The end result was pretty good, though I find them a bit cakey. I used to do this thing where I would switch between three different cooking sheets for 5 minute intervals and then flash freeze them for a few minutes after a minute of cooling down. That worked beautifully. But since two of my cookie sheets are at college, and because I am lazy beyond all hope, I just let them sit this time. 

My Morning, Noon, and Night Coffee

Personally I'm not much of a coffee drinker, but I can appreciate the bold and rich flavors that it brings. Lately my friend Eve and I have gotten into eating espresso laced desserts--from cakes to brownies: they're fantastic.

This is my second time making this espresso chiffon cake. And like many of my endeavors (billiards, math, extemp), the first time was better, but I might have also been drunk while eating the first one, soooo that's debatable. The first time, I also had to steal 9 eggs from various fridges in the dorm, so perhaps this time was marginally better. 

Any rate, I find that using simple whipped cream instead of the fudge frosting Deb uses is perfectly normal and even desirable. For me, the cake tastes more of cinnamon than it does of coffee, which has its pros and cons, but many people swear it tastes just like a good cup-o'-joe. And like my rare coffee, I like to enjoy this with a scoop of vanilla ice cream. 

Peppermint Bark...cupcakes?

Another holiday staple has to be peppermint bark. I absolutely love this stuff, or really anything with peppermint and chocolate, around the holidays. Since I'm not really a chocolatier, I'm not so confident in my chocolate manipulating abilities, so I tend to stay away from making anything chocolate. 

This year I'm going to have to learn to get over my fear of working with chocolate, slowly. I took baby-steps with this one, and simply decided to translate the candy into something I could bake instead. So I took out my favorite red-velvet cake recipe from SmittenKitchen, which for me doubles as the perfect cocoa-powder based chocolate cupcake without the red. I added another 4 ounces of melted semi-sweet baking chocolate and went with it. The frosting is just whipped cream with a bit of vanilla and peppermint extracts. I topped them with some crushed candycanes for the full effect. For this one, I only used about two-thirds of the sugar and I substituted the buttermilk with regular whole milk. 

Just think crushed candycanes on top.

For me, the added chocolate doesn't really do that much for the cupcake as a whole. I think the chocolate flavor is more pronounced, but not overwhelmingly so like I had hoped. Luckily though the addition doesn't do anything bad for the texture. The cupcakes turned out incredibly light and still rather moist. 

Gingerbread.

Lately I've been having the biggest craving for gingerbread cookies. In my mind I have this perfect vision of what a gingerbread cookie ought to be, but this probably differs vastly from what everyone sees, smells, and tastes. 


When I think of my perfect gingerbread cookie, I think of something intense, spicy, warm, with a faint sweetness that isn't overpowering. I want it to be something delicate and special, not a brick. It's not a crunchy cookie, but it isn't something that falls apart either. I envision an initial chewiness that ends up melting away in your mouth anyway. And above all, I want it to be thick, like thicker than most gingerbread men thick.

I don't have a go to recipe for gingerbread cookies, so I turned to SmittenKitchen and her adapted recipe from none other than Martha Stewart herself. But I wasn't satisfied and ended up looking to 7 other go-to sites for their gingerbread cookie recipes. I finally settled on this one from Sophistimom. SmittenKitchen's cookies look like a dream, but perhaps a bit too unyielding. Sophistimom's remind me of snickerdoodles, which isn't exactly what I'm going for, but they seem to work perfectly for her. The texture that I'm thinking of is somewhere in the middle--time to math away and combine the two.

I tone down some of the spices that both recipes call for, opt for the orange zest, and scale down the sugar content in both. I keep mostly with the Smitten variety, because I'm a fan of how well those keep up, but I add more butter to it, since I want them to be a little softer, and because we could all use more butter in our lives. I also used honey in this batch as opposed to molasses which made them a lot lighter in color.


The dough ends up being pretty sticky to handle, but not unruly. Definitely let the dough chill before rolling it out. I didn't have too much trouble, but it would have been much easier if I'd waited longer. 

I like them straight out of the oven with a little bit of generic icing on top. If you let them cool, they get a bit of a crunch on the edges, which isn't too bad. Next time I might tweak it to add the slightest bit of applesauce or sour cream or I might actually use the molasses that I was supposed to use; they are by no means dry, but I think I was hoping for a portable piece of cake. The good thing about these, is they have just the right flavor, except with none of the crazy richness. They don't leave me feeling like I just had a spiced up pancake, but the flavor is very much so present. 

 Gingerbread

3 cups all-purpose flour
3/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
1 1/2 teaspoons ground ginger
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoons ground cloves

1/2 teaspoons nutmeg

Pinch of salt

Zest of 1 orange

1 tablespoons freshly grated ginger
3/4 cup (1.5 sticks) unsalted butter (at room temperature)

1 teaspoons Vanilla extract
1/2 cup packed dark-brown sugar
1 large eggs
1/2 cup unsulfured molasses

You know the drill. Mix the dries with the dries and the wets with the wets. Combine. Chill. Bake at 325 for 10 minutes or until they look good.