Red Bean 'Brownie' Recipe

Ingredients:
16 oz. sweet rice flour (glutinous rice flour works too, its what I used)
1 can of Red Bean Paste
1 1/2 tsp. baking soda
1 1/2 tsp. baking powder
1 cup of sugar (to taste though)
2 cups of milk
Option: nuts

Directions:
Mix all the dry ingredients first, and then add the can of red bean paste. Stir, and then gradually (by 1/2 cupfuls) add the milk until everything is wet. The batter should be very stiff though. Here's a semi helpful picture of the batter:



You can add nuts, I added some crushed hazelnuts because they were on hand. Pour into a 9" square greased baking pan and bake at 375 for about 35 minutes, until a toothpick comes out clean. Let it cool. Then cut up and eat!

Credited to my mom ;D

This isn't a real brownie / anything that remotely resembles a cake, as you can tell from the picture. It's closer to 'mochi' or dduk, in korean aka, sweet rice cake, mixed with sweet red beans. AND it's gluten free! Very chewy and delicious.

Holiday Cookies

The other day my friend Ellen and I got together to make holiday cookies, except the only shape cutters we had were the ones I used for my bento stuff. We did have holly sprinkles, so with a little creativity and patience we made some interesting looking cookies, haha.



They were a simple rolled sugar cookie mix, except they resemble shortbread because I didn't roll them out thin enough. Hopefully, over the break I can make and decorate cookies proper. It's so much fun (but very, very time consuming). Yay! I have my genetics final tomorrow and I'm going to die.

Raspberry Dark Chocolate Ginger snaps

Pretty simple way to make some awesome tasting cookies. One package of gluten free ginger snaps and melted ghiradelli dark chocolate chips and a teaspoon of raspberry extract, mixed and coated well and stuck in the freezer for a couple hours. Warm to room temperature, or enjoy chilled! Bittersweet, fruity, gingery, and crunchy.

On that note, just wanted to remind everyone that I visit all commenters and leave clicks+comments and follow back followers, just to show my appreciation. Plus, y'all have interesting blogs!

Confession: I'm not southern, but I really like the word "y'all"

Hope you guys had a good Monday!

Choux a la Creme

I made my test run of Choux a la Creme today. These delicate puff pastries are well... a bitch. Whereas macarons are consistency devils, these are really about heat management. Luckily I made them small so there wasn't any major collapsing, but they did deflate. I also piped one tray entirely wrong, but at least I can correct my mistakes tomorrow. The cream is simple whipped heavy cream and sugar.

How to train your dragon (cake)

My birthday gift to my lovely friend and fellowblogger, Emma!! Happy 19th birthday to you, dear!

Macaron Marathon

Day three of the baking marathon continues. Since I had 5~ egg whites left from making tim's birthday cake, I thought I'd give macarons another whirl. I had made macaron's before, using David Lebovitz French Chocolate Macaron Recipe. This time I ran three batches, one with the french chocolate and two from Serious Eats. The Raspberry butter cream filling was my own twist.


Needless to say, Macarons are featured quite often in lolita fashion. Prints, jewelry, accessories... there is something charming in these meringue esque almond flour based sandwich cookie treats.

There is also something evil.

Tenshi Cake

It was Tim's 19th birthday today, so I made a two layer yellow cake with chocolate butter cream frosting and a powdered sugar stencil rendition of "Tenshi" better known as Kanade from the show Angel Beats. (She is his favorite character, btw this was not a super random whim like usual). By far the most ambition stencil, I misjudged the size and so it was not as epic as it could have been. Still, he seemed really happy so all was well :D

"Don't be Jealous" Coffee Cake

Since I have 2 birthdays to celebrate this week, Tim and Emma's, that means I'll be making 2 special cakes for special people :D And I didn't want my mom to feel left out by any means so I made this simple sour cream coffee cake which was quite delicious. Also very nostalgic, because I remember my mom making this coffee cake in a bundt pan when I was growing up in Rhode Island. The tastes of nostalgia!
If I make another cake in a tube pan, I'll have to think of a way to do a cool stencil. Maybe a wreath design (Kill me) or just little stars.. or snow flakes? An idea for the winter.

Strawberry Key Lime Pie

This is a traditional key lime pie recipe mixed with pureed strawberries. Next time I might do a minor food coloring addition just so the filling isn't so... fleshy colored. But I can make up for that with a whipped cream and fruit garnish >_> Also, ugly crust is ugly
With the left over strawberry puree I blended it with milk and ice to make... a strawberry milky ice, haha. Next time I'll have ice cream or yogurt on hand to make a shake/smoothie. Next time it will be mango key lime, but I need a break from breaking my hands over juicing key limes.

Tardis Cake

James came over today, and to celebrate we made a cake. And then we made it a Tardis cake. More pics after the jump

Another Cake

Red velvet cake, from scratch, made by Stacey, Lizzy, and myself. Decorated ourselves. Can you really call it decorated? Oh well. Italia!

let them (not) eat cake

Recipe from barefoot contessa, basic chocolate cake. I cut the recipe in half because I only had 1 9 inch pan, not 2 8 inch pans to make a double layer. Also, Mom doesn't like frosting so I just made a powder sugar heart. It came out pretty good, and very yummy. I think next time, I'll flour the pan a little less heavily, and remember to buy vanilla extract from the store. But! I got food color for macarons! So it's time to make another batch of macarons <3