Being Beata

I’ve been getting into cooking lately. My favorite source of recipes has been The Pioneer Woman. Her blog is fantastic – not just for cooking, but for photography as well. Anyways, I’ve made a few of her recipes recently.

Asian Noodle Salad (Link to recipe)

This was a huge success.  It’s really easy to make – the only cooking being the pasta.  Otherwise, it’s just lots of slicing and dicing.  It was hard for me simply because I was doing it at my boyfriend’s place, and his kitchen is just like any other bachelor kitchen – aka insufficient.  I’ve since rectified it a little bit, but at the time, I was slicing and dicing on a plate with a steak knife.  We won’t talk about how difficult that was, especially when I was trying to cut up cabbage.  I’m surprised I didn’t cut myself at all.  Maybe the steak knife was too dull…

Anyways, the boyfriend loved it.  I loved it.  It’s crisp, delicious, and refreshing.  I made it in August, so it was perfect for the summer.  The dressing is very flavorful without being too heavy.  We both ate 2 large plates of it, but still didn’t come out bloated.  I’ll definitely be making it again.

Pasta with Eggplant (Link to recipe)

This was pretty tasty.  It’s easy to make, but it does take time.  Cutting up all the eggplants and salting them was a lot of work, and it might just prevent me from making them again.

Bacon Onion Cheddar Biscuits (Link to recipe)

Yum yum yum yum yum.  It was so yummy I forgot to take pictures of the finished product.  Frying the bacon took a while, but it’s completely worth it.  I’ll eat this at all times of the day – in fact, mostly I just need to come up with an excuse to eat another one .

I’ve made quite a few of her other recipes so far.  A List: Baked Lemon Pasta, Pico de Gallo & Guacamole, Penne a la Betsy, Fig’s Cheese Muffins, Perfect Pancakes, and Baba Ghanoush.  I didn’t take pictures of any of these, but they were all delicious and you should try them.

One of my friends is a wonderful vegan cook.  She has Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World, and I couldn’t resist the cute-ness of the cupcakes in there.  One summer night, I went over to her apartment and we did a little baking.  Below is our rendition of the Green Tea Cupcake.  (Recipe available on Google Books here)

The cupcakes are super delicious.  We tinted some marzipan pink to make the roses on top.  I’m not a vegan, but vegan cupcakes taste just as good as regular ones, if not better.  They make me feel less blah even after I eat way too many.  I’m definitely a big fan.

A few weeks later, I felt compelled to make the Green Tea cupcakes again, but a non-vegan version this time.  This is the recipe I used.

In theory, the icing should have turned out thick like the picture, but I messed something up and it didn’t, so I just used it as a glaze.  I had some Baker’s white chocolate, so I shaved some to put on top as garnish.  That was my first time working with chocolate, and I struggled with it melting until I realized I needed to put it in the freezer every so often to cool it back down.  I think it was a great success, plus the white looks so pretty on the green!

My random crafty achievements of the week

Flower arrangement

Mac & Cheese

Yes – Mac & Cheese is an acheivement for me .  Those of you who know me know that I don’t cook.  I heat.  And normally, I woudn’t consider boxed Mac & Cheese cooking either, but I was crafty and got some super extra sharp cheddar (the way I like it) and grated it and put it on top.  Then I broiled it.  Mac & Cheese pizza.  OMG – so heavenly.  I really wasn’t going to eat much of it, since I already had sushi for dinner before I even made it, but my body objected.  I had dental surgery that morning, and I guess my body wants the extra calories to recover or something (at least that’s what I’m telling myself).  I ended up eating the whole pan.  Yeah – that was a little bit of binging even for me.  But it was delicious, and I have stuff to make more.  Yum!

Last Sunday, I got the urge to make some good breakfast.  I found this recipe online, and it is the most fantastic waffles I’ve ever had.  Light, fluffy, moist, and crispy.

I didn’t think of taking pictures (sad!), but I’m sure I’ll make it again.  For the moment, here’s the recipe for those who want to try.

Best Waffles Ever

(my try yielded 4 Belgian waffles)

Ingredients

1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 egg yolks
1 3/4 cups milk
1/2 cup canola oil
2 egg whites

Procedure

1. In a medium mixing bowl stir together flour, baking powder, and salt. Make a well in the center.

2. In another bowl beat egg yolks slightly. Stir in milk and oil.

3. Add egg yolk mixture all at once to the dry mixture. Stir just till moistened (should be lumpy).

4. In a small bowl beat egg whites until stiff peaks form (tips stand straight up).

5. Gently fold egg whites into flour and egg yolk mixture, leaving a few fluffs of egg white, Do not overmix.

6. Spoon waffle batter into your waffle iron, making sure not to overfill it.

7. Serve with real maple syrup and unsalted butter.

I was crafty for this Mother’s Day!

For my mom, I made her a cake – Hong Kong style. In Hong Kong, cakes are not frosted with frosting, but with whipped cream. The cake itself is also a lighter chiffon cake. Needless to say, these kinds of cakes are hard to buy from an American bakery, so I made her one for mother’s day.

Show and tell (picture) time:

I baked the chiffon cake from this recipe. The cake turned out great, even though I wasn’t completely careful and made some boo-boos on the way. I baked it in a spring form pan for about an hour, then I removed the cake and put it in the freezer to cool.

Once cooled, I took it out and sliced it horizontally into 2 layers. Then I frosted the middle with whipped cream and layered slices of strawberry on top, then frosted it with another layer of whipped cream. See that gushy whipped cream goodness? I did that! Woot! I love whipped cream.

Then I frosted the top and the side (which was tricky, by the way), and put slices of strawberries on top and wrote on it. My icing hand writing sucks. Please ignore my 2nd grader letters.

The cake tasted great. My only gripe was that apparently it wasn’t completely cooked through. The middle was fine, since I tested it with a skewer, but the bottom wasn’t completely done (weird, since usually the middle is the culprit), but the skewer didn’t pick that up since it’s all the way in the bottom! At least it was just a little, so I just cut it off when we ate the cake.

Second mother’s day craftiness was more related to this blog – I dyed fiber! My mother-in-law has been wanting to spin yarn, so I decided to send her a little spindle kit. This is 4 oz of corriedale wool that I dyed with food coloring. The purple sucked up at difference paces into the wool, which created a pretty cool variegated effect.

Here is the spindle we sent her. Hubby made the spindle and painted the design on it. He came up with the sheep spinning its own wool idea – I love it! It’s the cutest thing ever!

Note: Design and Image (c) Sean Deitrick 2008