Sorry for the lack of updates! Here’s a couple that I totally forgot to put up from a while ago. Pajamas + yummy food = the start of an excellent day.
This is a rendition of a middle eastern egg dish – it’s made with eggs and crumbled feta cheese. Yum!
And here are some fantastically fluffy, delicious buckwheat pancakes. Strawberries and syrup are optional – these are tasty on their own.
Made these a while ago, but forgot to update! I think next time, I’d like to use beet juice to color the cupcakes instead of food coloring. I wonder if it’d make a big difference (other than the fact that it would be a more natural alternative).
Here, my cupcake army prepares to attack the box of confectioner’s sugar.
In case anyone’s wondering, this is my kickass new cupcake transporter! It’s from Crate and Barrel, and my cupcakes have never felt safer.
How very dependable! Oh, and you can flip over the bottom row to hold two dozen treats.
I used a cream cheese frosting, and once it had time in the fridge, it came out wonderfully thick. The white looks so gorgeous on the red cupcakes…
Ah, long time no post. Today is a simple bento made with a new wok pan. Chicken yakisoba, slightly spicy and warm – perfect for a cold All-Hollows’ Eve.
And of course, no Halloween is complete without some scary pumpkins! D:
What’s extra nice is that the candles inside were cookie-scented, making it a real treat to walk past these guys.
I finally used my nori punch-out set! I’ve been putting it off because I’m not very confident in making onigiri without covering it in nori to maintain its shape. The art of preparing the “perfect” sushi rice for optimal shaping is completely lost on me.
Anyway, the final product:
Why didn’t I place the faces the right way up? Well, I had the mini compartments that fit into the bento out separately as I arranged the food (also for better cooling) and completely forgot that the big compartment for the onigiri would be portrait-style, not landscape. Eh heh. Here it is in the direction I placed it in:
For the first side dish, I made seasoned potatoes – or, gamja jorim in Korean. It’s sweet and a little spicy. Not quite as good as my grandmother makes it, but…
Side dish number two is tempura shrimp. I purposely left out a few of these guys from the time I made the shrimp cocktail for this ^^. On top is the usual Sriracha sauce.
In case those weren’t enough, I brought out the mini-bento container for the rest of the tempura. These I covered in a mayo-ketchup sauce.
The recipe is from Just Bento, a fantastic bento blog with gorgeous photographs. Being a fan of tea, how could I pass this up?
I skipped the muffin tin liners and just baked them “nude” ^^
As charming as the uniform brown color is on the Just Bento version, I really like how mine have two different color tones.
Most of all, the flecks of Earl Grey tea make the muffins so appetizing.
As a finishing touch, I sprinkled some powdered sugar on top.
Yum!
I woke up a little late, and without a bento plan, I had to improvise. Taking all the veggies in the fridge (baby portobellas, baby carrots, scallions) plus an egg, I made fried rice. As side dishes, I fried up pre-packaged mini meat-patties called “Don Gu Rang Teng” a Korean brand that I grew up on.
The charm point of today’s bento is the “mushrooms.”
Quail eggs, topped off with a halved cherry tomato! They remind me of the… er, “Chinese” mushrooms from Disney’s Fantasia:
I tried cooking bacon in an oven this morning. So much better than stovetop. Not only is it neater, you can walk away from it without worrying (I hate how you have to babysit frying foods).
Mmm, fatty American-style breakfast :9
Today’s soba noodles in a soy sauce/sesame oil/vinegar mix. I threw in some sesame seeds and ginger powder as well. I really hope the sesame oil keeps the noodles from getting sticky until lunchtime…!
In an attempt to quickly use up the mayonnaise (I have a paranoia about mayo and expiration dates thanks to a childhood memory of my mother buying a HUGE jar of the stuff at Costco. We never got through even half, but having an issue with being “wasteful,” she just kept the jar in the fridge. Suffice it to say, the looming, gross presence of that giant, expired mayo jar haunts me to this day), I whipped up some spinach and horseradish to make a simple sauce for the seared chicken.
Lastly, the tamagoyaki is a much simpler one than last time. This attempt is seasoned with only salt and pepper. For the sake of color, I squeezed a bit of yummy Sriracha sauce (a Thai hot sauce I can’t imagine life without). Hopefully, this version will go over better.
I never, ever get tired of making cupcakes – watching them bake inside the oven still gives me a rush of happy ^^ And you feel so accomplished when you pull the perfect rows out from the heat!
Lately, I haven’t been able to visit the Magnolia Bakery for their over-hyped cupcakes. I know it’s tacky, but darn it, I do stand on those ridiculous lines to get to the decadent, pastel-colored treats. So when I saw the recipe online, I decided to give it a go.
The cakes themselves came out perfect and tasty… but the frosting… yikes.
The recipe for the famed Magnolia frosting called for more milk than I’m used to, and I was mildly suspicious, but being a gullible sort, I trusted the order for a 1/2 cup of milk. Disaster soon followed. A frosting soup soon formed in my mixing bowl. In my panic, I added more and more sugar, but nothing would help it! I resigned myself to chilling the soup frosting in the fridge for a while. It helped, but it was nowhere near the texture I was going for. Boo.
The final product:
Here’s a close up, with some awfully precious sprinkles on top:
Now, all that’s left is to ride out my sugar-rush as I distribute these babies!
It rained like mad all day long yesterday – ick, humidity. I made some warm shrimp cocktail and garlic bread to munch on while blasting the AC.
The most satisfying part of making this was boiling the vegetable stock to cook the shrimp in – all the week-old produce (like the wilted carrots, mushy onions…) in the fridge can disappear in one go! Tossing in some bay leaves and peppercorns added a nice dimension to the smell too.
Love Bento 