Carrot Cake

UPDATE: I made this cake again for Vance's birthday and decided to decorate it with carrot marzipan.

This is one of my favorite carrot cake recipe and it comes from The Pioneer Woman herself. Vance loves this cake but I don't bake a lot so he has to wait until I'm in the mood to make them (when I am not being lazy).

You can bake the cake the day before and let it cool in the fridge before frosting. You should never, EVER, ever frost a cake when it's still warm ... not even lukewarm! Here's Pioneer Woman's recipe for Sigrid's Carrot Cake (click on the link to go to her site!)

P/S - I made this cake using a round cake pan, you can use a sheet cake pan or a Bundt cake pan. I think next time, I'm gonna cut the cake into halves and put some of the icing in the middle as well.

For cake:
2 cups Sugar
1 cup Vegetable Oil
4 whole Eggs
2 cups All-purpose Flour
½ teaspoons Salt
1 teaspoon Baking Soda
1 teaspoon Baking Powder
1 teaspoon Ground Cinnamon
2 cups Grated Carrots (grated finely)

For Icing:
1 stick Regular Butter, Softened
1 package (8 Oz) Cream Cheese
1 pound Powdered Sugar
2 teaspoons Vanilla
1 cup Pecans (toasted), Chopped Finely

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. In a large bowl, mix sugar, oil and eggs together until it looks like a smooth curd. In another bowl, sift together flour, salt, baking powder, baking soda and cinnamon.

Add the dry ingredients into the egg mixture.

Add grated carrots and mix well.

Pour into a greased and floured  9 x 13 sheet cake pan or a 9 inch round cake pan (I used silicone pans so I didn't have to grease ans flour the pan). Bake until done, about 25 mins for sheet cake pan and about 50 mins for round cake pan. The cake is done when a toothpick inserted into the cake comes out clean.

Cool completely before icing.

In larger bowl, mix butter and cream cheese. Cream until smooth.

Add vanilla and sugar. Mix well.

Then add in the pecans.

Spread on cooled carrot cake. Voila! Commence food porn ...

NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM!

Goat Cheese Crostini

This is an easy to prepare appetizer that's quick and simple. Great with wine or as party appetizers. You can prep batches of these beforehand and toast them before serving. Thanks for this recipe, Nate!

1 baguette
Goat cheese, preferably spreadable
Sliced almonds
Honey
Truffle oil (optional)

Preheat oven at 400 degrees F. Slice baguette lengthwise, about 1/2 inch per piece.

Brush the top of baguette slices with some truffle oil. Spread goat cheese on top and sprinkle on some sliced almonds. Drizzle with honey.

Toast in the oven for about 5 minutes or until the almonds started to brown. Serve warm or room temperature.

Kitty's Fish Cakes (For Cats!)

I wanted to make something special for my cat, Serra, for her birthday and stumbled upon this recipe online. I made a few adjustments from the original recipe because I'm not sure if serving cats brewer's yeast and tomato paste is a good idea. At first I wanted to make this in a cake pan but opted on using cupcake and fish molds so they cook evenly can be stored easily. You can also make these as treats and shape them to balls. If the title wasn't clear enough, this is a recipe for cats ... unless you like to eat catnip.

By the way, my cats loved these fish cakes. This recipe can feed 3 cats for 2 meals. They just wolfed down the leftovers in minutes! You can bake a batch of these and use them as treats.

Ingredients
3 baby carrots
12 oz canned tuna in water
3.75 oz cooked cooked sardines in water
2 tablespoon bread crumbs
3 tablespoons grated Parmesan cheese
1 teaspoon catnip
1 egg, beaten
A few pinches of bonito flakes and catnip for garnish (optional)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. In a plastic container, cook baby carrots with some water inside a microwave for 5 minutes or until they are soft. Drained and mashed the carrots.

Drain tuna and sardines from the can. Reserve the liquid for use later (as garnish).

Combine all the ingredients and mix evenly (except the garnishes).

The mixture should look like this.

Now, you can either roll them up into balls or cook them inside molds. I used cupcake molds and fish molds. Bake for about 20 minutes or until they are firm. Let them cool completely before serving. Garnish with a sprinkle of catnip, bonito flakes and some of the tuna and sardines liquid to make it irresistible to your kitties!

 Happy Kitties!

Happy Birthday Serra!

Tong Yuen (Sweet Chinese Dumpling Soup)

In Malaysia, Tong Yuen (Cantonese) or Tang Yuan (Mandarin) 汤圆 is eaten on the Winter Solstice Festival (冬至) and Chinese New Years Eve. It's easy to get these Tong Yuen on the frozen aisle in Chinese supermarkets if you live in New York City. I do miss making them like I would with my grandma every year.

Me and grandma would pre-roll these Tong Yuen into balls the night before Winter Solstice Festival and Chinese New Year Eve. We cook them up in the morning before we proceed to cook up a feast for the family dinner. Tong Yuen does brings back fond memories of me and grandma so I decided to make them from scratch this year. I think me and grandma had only made Tong Yuen from scratch only a few times, we usually buy pre-made dough and would just roll them ourselves.

Traditional Tong Yuen are white (original dough color) and red (it's really more pink than red) but you can get creative and use other food coloring. Because I am making these for Christmas Eve, I made them white, red and green. Using pandan leaves is optional, but you know how Malaysian are --- pandan leaves is to Malaysians as vanilla essence is to Americans.

Tong Yuen dough:
2 cups sweet rice flour/mochiko
1/2 cup rice flour
7 oz. cold water
1/4 cup white sugar
Food coloring

Tong Yuen sweet soup:
8 cups water
1 cup sugar
3 inch ginger, bruised (more ginger if you like it gingery)
A few pieces of pandan leaves (optional)

Knead ingredients together into a pliable dough that won't stick to your hands. You can add more sweet rice flour/mochiko until the dough is not sticky. Divide them into portions. Add a few drops of food coloring into each portion and knead until well distributed. You can make as many color varieties as possible. Here, I made white, red and green. You can also mix these colored doughs together to achieve a marbled effect. Wrap up the dough with plastic wrap inside the fridge for at least 6 hours, preferably overnight. The dough is much more pliable then.

To make the sweet soup, boil water, sugar, ginger and pandan leaves until a rolling boil. Then, turn the flame to low and let it steep for about 30 minutes. While you let the soup steep, start cooking the Tong Yuen.

To cook the Tong Yuen, roll them up into small balls about the size of a quarter. In a large pot, boil water until it's in a rolling boil. Drop Tong Yuen into the pot but be careful not to overcrowd them.

Cook them as you would cook pasta, stirring occasionally. Cook for about 5 minutes, at which point all of the Tong Yuen should float to the top. Drain Tong Yuen and transfer them to the sweet soup. Serve warm.

Easy Tarte Tatin

I love Tarte Tatin, an upside down pie created from the Lamotte-Beuvron region of France in the 18th century. There are different methods for making Tarte Tatin and this one is the easiest in my mind. It's one of the easiest apple pie to make. Tarte Tatin is best served with warm with vanilla ice cream or fresh cream. For a better presentation, you should make this in a round pie dish.

Ingredients:
8 apples (preferably baking apples, I'm using Golden Delicious).
1 cup sugar
1/4 cup butter
1 tablespoon water
1/2 tablespoon vanilla extract
Frozen puff pastry sheet(s), defrosted

Core and cut apples in wedges (about 6 or 8). Preheat oven to 400 degrees. To prepare caramel,  by heat sugar and water on a pan over medium heat. Swirl the melting sugar around. Make sure you don't stir the sugar and be careful not to burn your sugar. If it starts to brown really fast, lower the heat.

Do not walk away and do something else, you should always have your eyes on the sugar. Once it all the sugar melts and the syrup has a deep amber color, turn off the heat.

Add in butter and vanilla extract. Swirl it around until all the butter melts.

Pour the caramel on a casserole dish. It's OK that the caramel doesn't spread all over the bottom, since when you bake your apples it will turn more liquidy.

Arrange apple pieces on top of the caramel. Start with a single layer and once that's done, pack any leftover apple slices on top of the first layer. Bake apples in the oven for 40 minutes. Cover the apples with aluminum foil and bake for another 10 minutes.

Remove apples from the oven. Pack apple pieces tightly by pressing them down.

Roll out puff pastry and put it on top of the apples. If you are using a large casserole dish, you might need two sheets of puff pastry.

Bake for another 20 minutes or until the puff pastry is golden brown.

Once the Tarte Tatin is cooled, invert it. I usually line my cutting board with aluminum foil then invert the Tarte Tatin from the dish.

Serve warm with vanilla ice cream or fresh cream. Yum!