sweets – Page 16 – AT-AT Everywhere

Key Lime Bars with Pistachio Graham Cracker Crust and Blueberry Compote

Whoops, it’s May already.

Tons of work, the NBA finals, and my own workout/basketball shenanigans have absorbed the last two months, so I’ve been slacking on all things baking and crafts. I did, however, manage to dedicate this past Saturday evening to baking after being inspired by the dessert I had a couple weeks ago at one of my favorite restaurants in West LA. I’m not a huge key lime pie fan, but the key lime pie bar with blueberry compote at Nook was simply splendid. I found tons of key lime recipes online, but one recipe had two things the others didn’t – pistachios and Martha Stewart. I also sourced the blueberry compote companion from a pancake recipe of hers.

After one trip each to Target and the market, I realized I didn’t have any parchment paper nor enough limes. During my third lap to the store, I decided an 8″x8″ square pan was just not going to be enough key lime bars to share – especially considering it’s another one of Kevin’s favorite desserts. Being the brilliant pseudo-pastry chef that I am, I eyeballed extra of each ingredient when making the crust to fill a 9″x12″ pan, and then discovered I had neglected to buy double the ingredients for the filling. It looked like a sad little puddle of tart creaminess in a huge desert of crust. After a frazzling total of four (yes, four) trips to the market, I finally had all the ingredients I needed only to realize I was supposed to bake the crust BEFORE I put the filling in it. MEGA. FAIL. At that point, I had conceded that this officially was my first baking disaster and decided to just finish it out like the champ I had so hoped to be.

Despite the mishaps, I think they still turned out halfway decent. The crust was still crusty and solid, and everything seemed to have baked evenly.

Unfortunately, I forgot to take photos but I do think I’ll be making these again in the near future. I did love the pistachio graham cracker crust turned out, and am open to suggestions of other things I can pair it with!!

Raspberry Mini Cheesecakes

I somehow managed to get sick AGAIN last week, thus the surge in posts (2 posts within a week is a lot!). It all started on Valentine’s Day – the day I was planning to surprise Kevin with a new cheesecake recipe I came across back in January. However, we miraculously must have channeled the germ gods at the same time because we both ended up feeling fatigued and sniffly by the end of the day. After almost a week straight of feeling congested, unquenchably dehydrated, and tired, I finally regained my energy over President’s Day weekend – enough energy to cook-up a storm.

The way to a man’s heart is through his stomach, or so the cliché goes. However, the object of my affection has a bottomless pit for a stomach and peculiar taste preferences, so I’ve really had to change up my game in the last few months. While my food staples are quinoa, fresh produce, and lean proteins, Kevin’s are Party Pizza, Carl’s Jr. western bacon cheeseburgers, chicken nuggets, and hot sauce. While I like to think I’ve always been a decent cook (considering my parents don’t cook so I pretty much figured it out on my own), it’s been a challenge to meet halfway between an “obsessively healthy” cooking style to cuisine that has a lot of flavor additives. The man even said STEAK doesn’t have enough flavor…to which I replied, “That’s because you haven’t had mine yet”. Challenge accepted. I said I was going to make steaks for dinner.

After an hour’s worth of time at Ralphs and Trader Joe’s followed by a 3-hour (yes, THREE HOUR) stint in the kitchen, I’m glad to share with you my well-rounded (albeit not calorie-friendly) dinner featuring a dinner salad, my favorite homemade steak, mac and cheese (Kevin’s pick), and raspberry mini cheesecakes. The raspberry cheesecakes really are the main event to this post, but I was taking tons of photos for the cheesecakes anyway so I figured why not do the same for the meal as a whole.

Who can resist a medium-rare filet mignon rubbed with a little fresh ground pepper and kosher salt? I topped it with some fried garlic and grilled onions on the side. Nom.

Next up, we have baked mac and cheese, utilizing a recipe I borrowed from Alton Brown.

Last but not least, sweets for my sweet. I made a raspberry puree sauce with my “hand-y” food processor. That is, I don’t own a food processor so I mashed a container of raspberries with a fork and separated the seeds from the fruit. I didn’t need the raspberry seeds/guts for this recipe, but it made a nice pseudo-jam for my almond butter sandwich the next morning.

Raspberry Sauce (right) and Seeds (left)

The hardest part about making these guys was dealing with the water bath situation. I drowned one or two mini cheesecakes in water every time I took a batch out of the oven. The other difficult step was drawing the hearts, while taking a photo in one hand and keeping my other hand steady while doing the heart. I didn’t have any toothpicks handy, so I improvised by using an uncooked soba noodle to draw the hearts.

I thoroughly enjoyed this particular recipe… dare I say even better than the Peanut Butter Chocolate Mini Cheesecakes I made for his birthday in August. As fluffy as I thought those were, these were much more delicate and light, but still had a velvety rich taste to them. Voilà!

Check out the gallery for more photos!

Separating the Seeds from the Raspberries

Holiday Bake-A-Thon 2009

As a belated follow-up to the Holiday Bake-A-Thon 2010 post, I’m dedicating this entry to the fruits of my labor circa December 2009.

To date, the Penguin Cupcakes I made last Christmas have been my favorite baking project, albeit the most laborious. That means blog content will probably go downhill from here, but I promise to try my best not to let my readers down… all three of you.

The penguins themselves are Jordan Almonds strategically dipped in chocolate. It was particularly difficult to get them dipped evenly because A) I had trouble finding the right balance of butter and chocolate to give the coating a thick and even consistency, and B) the almonds are ridiculously slippery so I kept dropping whole almonds in chocolate. A full bag of chocolate chips, two sticks of butter, and two hours later, I caved and bought some Wilton melting chocolate which worked perfectly. See penguin carnage in below photo. If you look closely, you might be able to spot the one with the accidental chocolate pompadour.

Next, I made the beaks from tiny pieces of orange Swedish Fish and frosted them onto the face of the penguin. My little flightless friends sat on a bank of white frosting topped with coconut “snow”, all on top of a homemade chocolate cupcake. A miniature candy cane “North Pole” sign was posted behind them. I got the recipe for the chocolate cupcakes as well as the inspiration for the decorations from Martha Stewart’s Cupcakes.

DSC05589_rev — My little fleet of penguins

In addition to the aforementioned fowl armada, I also made a plethora of cookies… specifically, one batch each of cranberry orange oatmeal, peanut butter kiss cookies, chocolate chip oatmeal, and pumpkin spice. My girl, Martha, put out some nifty treat boxes that year that I picked up at Michael’s. Target also had some small gift bags that I used too. Click on the thumbnails below for close-ups!

Cranberry Orange Oatmeal (front) and Chocolate Chip Oatmeal (back)

Martha Stewart Treat Boxes — Cookie Boxes

Holiday Bake-A-Thon 2010

Happy New Year! If you know Kevin and I, then you know that we aren’t fans of spending loads of money to be around lots of drunk, belligerent people with inevitably flailing limbs and flying drinks in tight quarters. To kick off 2011 KJ-and-Al style, we had a great dinner and got dolled up in our best ensembles for a night out… on the living room couch watching episodes of Top Chef until about 15 seconds before midnight. Classy. I’ve never stayed home on New Year’s Eve in my adult life, but I must say it was stress-free and really fun.

I’ve also been a bit sick the last couple of days, so I thought I’d spend the time updating here instead of circulating my germs in a new baking or crafts project. The holidays are an infamous time for reveling in buttery, sugary foods. I admittedly do partake in providing artillery for expanding the waistbands of those around me, as I usually try out a new baking recipe (or three) around the holiday season.

Nine sticks of butter (yes, NINE) and more than an entire brand new carton of sugar later, I think I truly outdid myself this year. I had been itching to make madeleines ever since I got a madeleine pan from my Sho-Yu Secret Santa last year. The little french cakes are so classy, and in my opinion, make a great holiday baking gift. Thanks to Martha, I found some great recipes I was dying to try out. I was really pleased with the colors that all three madeleines had distinct colors, making a nice looking gift bag. And the madeleines would not have come to existence if not for the help of Santa’s Little Helper, Kevin, who took some great photos and helped out a ton with the baking. I’ve never seen madeleine pans buttered so masterfully!

In addition to the madeleines, I also pulled out some White Chocolate Cranberry Oatmeal Cookies from my baking repertoire, as well as a Chicken Apple Sausage Cornbread Stuffing from scratch for a Christmas dinner potluck.

DSC07290_rev — White Chocolate Cranberry Oatmeal Cookies

Also, big thanks to Shirley for sending me the recipe for the Japanese Furikake Chex Mix that I’ve been eating my whole life but finally made for the first time.

I’ll keep this post relatively short, but here’s the photo gallery for close-ups of the madeleines in the making.

Browned Butter, Honey, and Vanilla Extract

White Chocolate Cranberry Oatmeal Cookies

Cheers to 2011!

Peanut Butter Chocolate Mini Cheesecakes

I would have to say my love of food is probably more fervent than the average person. There is nothing I enjoy more than ordering 1.5 entrees when eating out, making enough food to last me a couple days and then eating it all in one sitting instead, talking about eating while I’m eating, stuffing my face til I can no longer formulate complete sentences . . . you get the picture. I cook and eat mostly healthy fare, but I unfortunately inherited my dad’s sweet tooth and will probably inherit his diabetes as well. I’ve learned by trial-and-error to only bake for other people and/or special occasions, because I end up eating the whole batch when I bake something just for myself.

I made these for a birthday dinner this past August, and the birthday boy was an avid cheesecake and peanut butter lover. I had never made cheesecake before nor really eaten much of it, so this project was a bit of a challenge in that I didn’t know how to adjust cheesecake texture and flavor during the baking process like I know with cookies or regular cake.

I got the recipe for the Peanut Butter Chocolate Mini Cheesecakes from Food Network, courtesy of Paula Deen. Click on the photos below for a larger view!

Pouring the cheesecake mixture over the crust.

Cream cheese, sugar, flour, eggs, vanilla extract.

Graham cracker crumbs, butter, and sugar.

I had no idea how to make cheesecake fluffy, so I thought perhaps just beating the cheesecake mixture extra long with would do the trick. I think it paid off – when I had my first bite, my favorite line from Despicable Me came to mind. Big thanks to baking/cooking connoisseur Jay Liu for letting me borrow his electric mixer!

Again, I’m not an avid fan of cheesecake, but I have to admit these were pretty tasty. The birthday boy liked them too, so that’s all that matters in the end. Thanks, Paula Deen!