Filed under: Holiday, Photography, Silliness, nutella, taste by ramune

Tom Waits – Chocolate Jesus

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

It’s that time of year again . . . it’s World Nutella Day! It’s been snowing here most of the day, but I was determined to hunt down the illusive Nutella jar and get its photo (then eat its contents). I found this one attempting to hide in a tree. Busted. Here is last year’s Nutella Day post.

Ms Adventures in Italy
Bleeding Espresso

Filed under: Ice Cream, taste by ramune

It’s been a bit since I put my ice cream maker to use and it’s already mid-August. I still have dreams of making maple bacon ice cream (soon my friends . . . soon), but I happened to have some delicious white peaches from the farmers market and found a lovely (and simple) recipe from David Lebovitz’s “The Perfect Scoop” (see my fig ice cream from last year). Although I didn’t manage to get a photo of the final product (it disappeared pretty quickly when I brought it to a friend’s place), I did enjoy learning how to easily peel the skin off of a peach. You simply put the peaches into boiling water for 20 seconds and then pour cold water on them until they cool down. It shocks the peaches and the skin rubs right off.

I plan on making the ice cream again and maybe will update this entry with an actual photo. Until then, please excuse my poor excuse for a project this week and drool over some skinned peaches.

Filed under: Collaboration, Holiday, taste by ramune

My favorite of my Easter eggs this year

This past Saturday I spent almost the entire day (nine hours) making margučiai (Lithuanian Easter eggs). Some of my friends came by to learn how to decorate the eggs and I was pleasantly surprised to see them pick up on it so quickly and develop their own styles. I find the whole process very meditative and wish I could decorate eggs more than just once a year. If only I could start a career in decorating Lithuanian eggs . . .

For more photos from Easter, you can see my Flickr set here.

One of my favorite eggs

Cherry blossoms

Vaidila made some really elaborate eggs

A bundle of eggs, as you can see the blue worked the best

Vaidila’s video of my sister, me and my mother making margučiai. My sister pointed out that we all use the same “pinky on the egg” technique.

Filed under: Baking, taste by ramune

Delicious goodness in dough form

Holy lateness, I can’t believe I have let almost a month go without an update. I will try to catch up on the missing posts this week. Hopefully you will forgive me once I tell you about the best cookies I’ve ever made. If I could send them to you via the interweb tubes I would, but I think it might get messy and possibly ruin my computer (I think I read somewhere that gooey chocolate chips and dough do not mix well with electronics).

A while ago Smitten Kitchen had a recipe for the perfect chocolate chip cookies and I could not wait to bake them. I am a big fan of baking chocolate chip cookies (and the batter . . . oh the batter!) and I must say, these were by far the best I have ever baked. I think the secret is the melted butter. I could be wrong, but just look at that dough! It’s so smooth and velvety. To “show” you how good they are, I had 18 cookies on a plate and in a matter of minutes there were only two (it helps that my aunt and five cousins were visiting from Chicago). Smitten Kitchen has never led me (or anyone I know for that matter) astray, and I am so glad that she posted this delicious goodness.

Mmmm . . . I might bake some more tonight for my enamels class tomorrow (I like to feed them).

Filed under: Photography, Silliness, taste by ramune

February 5th, 2009 is World Nutella Day! Unfortunately I only found this out at 2:30 PM today, but I still had enough time to run out and buy myself a jar of Nutella (I know . . . how could I not already have a case in the pantry?). Initially I had grand visions of dunking my face in a vat (or a smaller vessel for practical purposes) of the amazing hazelnutty chocolaty goodness, but due to plans for the evening (not a wise decision to show up to dinner with a face covered in Nutella . . . or is it?) I decided to share my love with Bobute, who has traveled the world (well only Europe so far) with me. Normally she has Black Raspberry ice cream but for this special day she switched it up and got a special treat.

I was not the only one celebrating World Nutella Day though, Samer actually took my idea and put it to use. If you are on the East Coast you only have another 20 minutes of World Nutella Day, so find the nearest Nutella jar and start scooping.

02.09.09 UPDATE – My entry made it onto the World Nutella Day 2009 roundup!

Filed under: Photography, taste by ramune

In an attempt to catch up on these posts, I am posting two photos today. The first one is from last week’s farmers market. I imagine this won’t be the last since now is the time when all kinds of tasty veggies and fruits will be making an appearance.

Peppers at the Farmers Market

Filed under: Favorites, Friends, Ice Cream, taste by ramune

Six years ago my mother was given a little fig sprig that her friend’s grandmother brought back from a fig tree in Italy. Today this fig tree is 12 feet tall and produces hundreds of figs each year.

The image many people have of a fig is a dried-up shriveled nugget of fiber that is consumed by the geriatric community to get things “moving”. My view of figs has completely changed since I have spent some quality time with the fig tree. When you cut open a fresh fig it is one of the most beautiful fruits out there (in my opinion). It is not brown and shriveled at all. To the contrary it has a vibrant red center full of little blobules (spellchecker says this is not a word, but I think it should be) surrounded by a pale green and aubergine skin.

It’s amazing how many people have never had a fresh fig before (I am sure the exorbitant price doesn’t help). If you are one of these people I suggest you remedy it immediately. I don’t want to get your hopes up but it is a very different experience than eating a dried fig (which I still like).

With dozens of ripe figs waiting to be picked each day it’s hard to keep up with eating them all (if you did it might get things “moving” a little faster than you’d like), so I decided to make ice cream. I also needed to make a dessert for my friend Scott’s housewarming party so this was the perfect solution. After my last disaster with a horrible ice cream recipe I thought it would be a good idea to get it from a reputable source. In my search I kept reading wonderful reviews about the fresh fig ice cream found in the book A Perfect Scoop by David Lebovitz. Unfortunately it was sold out at every bookstore within 10 miles of me, so I drove out to the one store that had it (before some other ice cream lover could get it . . . sorry if that was you.

The recipe was easy and and the process was delicious. In fact, when I tasted the figgy jam part of the recipe I was in heaven. If you know me, you know I am a serious foodie and I get pretty excited about it (there is always something to look forward to!). This was a different level of excitement altogether. The best way I can describe it is like someone meeting their soul mate and never being able to live without them . . . but maybe not on such a dramatic scale. I now feel the need to have a fig tree wherever I live for the rest of my life (because buying fresh figs all the time is quite an investment). As if the figgy jam part wasn’t good enough the ice cream came out even better. I was nervous that it would be too hard (homemade ice cream has a way of doing that) but I think it came out a perfect consistency. Now I am not trying to toot my own horn here (I hope it isn’t coming off that way), I am tooting the figs’ horn and A Perfect Scoop‘s horn. Toot! Toot!

This was initially going to be two posts (since I am still behind by two) because after the ice cream I made a flourless chocolate-hazelnut cake (my friend Maya has a gluten allergy). Unfortunately I was in a bit of a rush to get it done and did not take enough time to get good photos of the process. The cake came out well though and I have included a photo below. I don’t think anyone else had the “soul mate” experience I had, but I think it was well received and I didn’t see any leftovers in anyone’s plate, so that’s always a good sign.

Filed under: Baking, Collaboration, taste by ramune

This past weekend I was in Chicago (for oral surgery and to see my family) and made cupcakes at my aunt’s house. I wish I had set up the camera to take photos of the process as it was quite unique. I am used to baking by mixing the wet ingredients and then adding in the dry. This recipe started out with the dry and then I had to add butter (a bit messy) and then the liquids. Either way, the cupcakes came out fantastic! When it came time to decorating them my aunt made the frosting and then we decided to add some color. Three of my cousins, one of their friends and I all contributed to the decorating as you can see below.

Collection of Buttercream Frosted Cupcakes

One of my decorated cupcakes

Detail of the buttery buttercream frosting

My cousin/goddaughter cleaning up the leftover cupcake dough (one of my favorite pastimes!)

Filed under: Failure, Ice Cream, taste by ramune

A few months ago I decided I wanted to buy an ice cream maker. Once the idea was in my head I could not get it out. When I couldn’t find the ice cream maker I wanted, I got mildly frustrated because I had these grand plans to create ice cream that would blow the world away (well not really, but it would be fun to send delicious ice cream care packages to friends). After a few hiccups, mainly getting screwed over by iKitchen when they sent me a refurbished maker and took far too long to reimburse me, I finally got a new working ice cream maker. I am not sure how it happened, but my ice cream maker sat in the closet unused for most of the summer . . . until this past week when I finally decided to take it out and put it to use.

I probably should have gone straight to Epicurious or some respectable ice cream recipe page, but I didn’t. I looked up “ice cream recipes” in Google and picked something that sounded good and relatively easy for my first batch: Crunchy Pecan Maple Syrup ice cream (I am not going to post the link because it’s not worth it). The recipe was simple . . . probably too simple. Even while I was making it I thought that it could use a few extra ingredients but I figured for my first time making ice cream I should just stick to the recipe. Unfortunately the recipe I chose was lame and although I am not happy with the results I thought I should post it anyway (it’s all part of the process anyway, right?).

The next time I make ice cream I am going to look up a few more recipes and do some serious research (Bobby Flay just did a throwdown that involved making Maple Spice ice cream . . . mmm). Maybe once it’s worth eating I will test it out on some friends. In the meantime, here are some photos of the process. I am still without a tripod so there are some shots I wanted to get and just couldn’t.

Roasting pecans

Mixing the ingredients

The final product, Crunchy Pecan Maple Syrup ice cream . . . mediocre.

Filed under: Baking, Collaboration, Friends, taste by ramune

My friend Elisabeth got married a few months back and for her wedding shower I gave her a cookbook called Cupcakes! and a muffin pan. Because the cookbook looked so good (yes I judge a cookbook by it’s cover and the pictures in it) I bought myself one as well. We had talked about getting together to bake cupcakes and finally did so this past weekend. After flipping through a number of pages of delicious looking (and sounding) cupcakes we narrowed it down to the Mississippi Mud cupcakes.

While I was at Fresh World buying the Oreos for the crusty bit, I picked up a few Asian snacks for Elisabeth and Ben (her husband). If you have a Fresh World near you and haven’t been yet, I suggest you check it out, it is a cultural experience. Fresh World is half regular grocery store, half Chinese/Korean/Indian/Hispanic grocery store (I won’t say world market because there is a lot missing from that list). I have seen a few stranger things there than I saw when I lived in China. Some of my favorites are “American Coffee” (Japanese version, in a can), pig uterus (among other strange animal parts), and the aisle full of Asian candies and snacks. I picked up some tasty chocolate/cookie goods for Elisabeth and “Fried Chicken Snack” for Ben . . . mmm. The greatest part about “Fried Chicken Snack” is that when you look at the ingredients there is nothing chicken about it.

That was a bit of a tangent, but I thought I would share. I am currently without a tripod and the lighting was not fantastic so I didn’t get quite as many good shots.

Crushed Oreo cookie crumbs makeup the bottom of the cupcake

3 oz. of semi-sweet chocolate in Elisabeth’s great measuring cups ready to be melted

Chocolate sour cream batter on top of crushed Oreo cookies and a few chocolate chips

Mississippi Mud Cupcakes! They are not the most photogenic but they sure pack a sugary chocolaty punch!

Bonus: Elisabeth with the Fried Chicken Snack pack