A Productive Saturday - Muffins & Pie Cookies

I've been looking up and printing many recipes lately, but I haven't actually had a chance to try them all! Turns out, it takes less time and effort to research them than it is to see them through...hrm...

As it turns out, I finally had a whole Saturday yesterday where I didn't have to work nor did I have any prior obligations. So what did that mean for me? A trip to Costco and Bed Bath & Beyond and some quality time in the kitchen!

A new mini muffin tin later, it was time to get this baking-fest started! First, I started with cappuccino muffins - I was drawn to the recipe because I happened to have all the ingredients and the topping showed promise for a delicious top of the muffin to give it some texture and help keep it from tasting too dry (I have been having this issue with muffins). 

Dry ingredients

Mixing in the chocolate chips

Crumble topping

All ready to go into the oven!

Overflow batter made it into regular sized muffin tins

Le petite muffins!

Next, I tried this apple w/ oatmeal topping recipe. I was really trying to do things right this time, so I was careful to measure everything out, and the only things I substituted were flour (I always used half white and half wheat), butter (half butter and half applesauce), and for the apple muffin recipe that called for 3 eggs, I substituted one for ground flax seed (who knew!).

Regular eggs pre-flax seed

Flax seed egg substitute

Whisking the Eggs w/ Flax Seed sub

Apples chopped & ready to go

Walnuts chopped & ready to go

Mixing the toppings

Batter ready for the mix-ins

Apple chunks mixed into batter

Toppings on and ready to go!

Sneak peek in the oven...I couldn't wait to see how they were doing...

Overflowing muffins are the best type of muffins =)

Overflow of batter ended up in regular muffin tins

And finally, last but not least, a recipe that I've been dying to try for months now, apple pie cookies from smitten kitchen! I made the dough for the crust after the first two muffins, and then took a break to cut up some watermelon (I needed space in the fridge) and get some quality time on a kayak - trying to take in the last few days of summer (it's been going by so quickly!). Then resumed assembly of the cookies when I got back. 

Clearing out space in the fridge, aka, cutting up watermelon

Prepping for the Apple Pie Cookies

Sliced & Diced

Cutting in the butter (can't find my food processor, so had to do it by hand)

Liking the green and yellow =)

For coating the apples

pre-seasoned apples (recipe calls to coat them one at a time...but that definitely didn't happen)

The rather laborious job of stamping out pie crusts - the larger

Before & After Baking

I am obviously biased toward the apple pie cookies...they got their own instagram compilation

Results: 

- The Cappuccino muffins were a little heavy for my taste. If I make them again, I will definitely be reducing the amount of sugar and need to figure out what else to do to make them lighter and more fluffy. Also will add more coffee flavor next time (can't really taste that much of it)

- Apple muffins - I loved! I think because there was a pretty even ratio of apple chunks to batter, kept it from being too dense. Plus the oatmeal/sugar topping gave it a nice texture.

- Apple Mini Pies - so worth the wait! I struggled a bit with the assembly, and I wonder if the whole wheat flour made it softer and less easy to work with? The dough didn't seem to be chilled enough though it had been sitting in the fridge for almost 2 hours (usually recipes call only for 1). I also didn't cut the apple pieces the same way that she called for, so I had to work around jagged edges instead of apple discs. Even for the dough I had to use makeshift cookie cutters! One ended up being tupperware...

Summary of the day

All in a day's work

Catching Up on Summer - Kayaking & Banana Crepes

I can't believe it has been almost two months since I have posted any updates, and yet, it has been almost two months *le sigh. 

However, it has not been 2 months wasted without wondrous food adventures - in fact, armed with a newly renovated kitchen and longer summer hours, I have been more inspired to cook more. I have also found that when I cook more, I eat less, to which my trainer responded - KEEP COOKING! I imagine that in his head, the rest of the phrase went something along the lines of ("if that is the only thing that will keep you from consuming food like a 300 pound man, do not ever stop cooking").

From experimenting with various muffins and spontaneous brunches, to having epic summer BBQs, I have much to catch up on! But let's start with this weekend and work our way backwards.

Just as an homage to summer - KAYAKING! I was lucky enough to get out of work yesterday, which was a beautiful sun-filled day, so I took off for the beach right after I got home for some relaxation/reading time on the water. 

View from the Dock

Chillin'

Catching the last rays of the sun on the beach

When bananas start to get too ripe, one must either a) peel them and put them in the freezer until further notice, b) make banana bread, or c) make banana crepes. I still had banana bread leftover from the last time I made them, so I decided to go with the crepes. 

Originally, I was going to try another crepe cake on Wednesday, so I pre-made the batter on Monday night. But then I never got around to actually doing anything with them until this weekend. Not sure if that affected the batter...I'm thinking it did a little, but at least it still turned out well. My main issue with it was that it took a lot more failed attempts than usual (I've already come to accept the fact that the first pancake/crepe or two will not turn out well). 

For the filling, all I did was cut up pieces of banana and add some slightly melted chocolate chips and then stack them all to make them look fancy.

Crepes in action

Failed attempts...I added some sparkle effects to make them (I mean me), feel better about myself themselves

The "good" ones that made it

Banana Crepe Tower

Mother's Day Dinner

Mother's Day Weekend started off as a whirlwind trip to LA for a friend's wedding - yay B&E!!! And while I had told my mom that my Mother's Day gift to her would be my homecoming that Sunday, apparently that wasn't enough, so I was roped into cooking dinner (not that I'm really complaining), for the family and then some. These were the messages I got from my family that morning too:

Sister: A student's mom wished me a Happy Mother's Day...so, I'll take this opportunity to be waited on all day, as soon as Anita  returns from CA. (Happy Mother's Day!!!)

Mom: Have a safe flight - I took the liberty of inviting [lists names of mothers who's kids are out of town] to dinner as well. See you soon!

THANKS FAMILY.

So I'm at the airport early Sunday morning (LA time), frantically looking up recipes that we have most of the ingredients for at home and making up a list of what else I would need to buy while texting my sister to start getting certain things prepared and double checking what we actually had at home.

I land in NY around 3:30, take the train to the nearest station by our house, get picked up, go straight to the grocery store, and am home around 5:30. When I get home, my mom's friend and son are cooking up a storm of ribs and marinated pork, so I wait a few minutes for them to clear some space in the kitchen (need to make sure I can maximize kitchen space and time to get dinner out in a somewhat timely manner). 

Round 1 chefs

Thankfully Angela had been able to thaw and shell a pound of shrimp for me beforehand, which i was using for 2 dishes, so those were all ready to go.  She also made her onion bread with bread to hold people over in case they got too hungry (we ended up being the most hungry and were eating while cooking as soon as her dip was done). 

The onion dip pro at work

Onion Dip

once the kitchen was cleared, I figured I would start with the raspberry tiramisu because it needed a lot of chilling time. From that point on, I kind of lost track of any order I had in mind - luckily I had Angela and Mark to kind of boss around the kitchen (my favorite thing to do), and help out with prepping things and dish washing (I'm officially giving Angela the titles of "dish washer" and "puree queen").

Somehow, by some miracle, between the multiple chopping boards, the oven and all the stove tops on, everything ultimately came together. "Everything" includes a Chilled Zucchini Soup with Lemon Cumin Shrimp and Cilantro Sour Cream, an Onion Frittata and Lemony Shrimp Scampi Pasta.  

Some things I learned from the experience to fix if I ever make these dishes again (I recently realized I tend not to repeat dishes because there are always so many recipes that I want to try!): 

- The poor Onion Frittata actually ended up being the most neglected dish, from the time an egg hid behind the bowl, so I only ended up using 7 eggs instead of 8. Then come dinner time, I totally forgot I had it sitting in the oven (the oven was off, I just didn't have any more counter space), so that was added to the table after everyone was pretty much full. Oops!

- I forgot that the soup was a "chilled" soup, so did not allot any "chilling" time. Instead, we made a mad scramble to stir in crushed ice cubes with the soup to try to cool it down. 

- Tiramisu is one of those awesome desserts where things don't necessarily have to be measured out perfectly. While I'm OCD about many things in life, I much prefer the somewhat organized chaos in the kitchen of adding a "pinch" here and a "pinch" there instead of super-exact measurements. 

- Make a more solid plan/timeline for things so as not to be so chaotic! (yea right...)

And as always, I made sure to take lots of pictures during the process - hope everyone had a fantastic Mother's Day! Thanks to all you mommas out there!

Onions used for multiple dishes...made sure I had some chopped ones on hand

2 of my favorite things...lemon and butter!

Raspberry Tiramisu: The Process

Zucchini Soup: The Process

Lemon Scampi Sauce: The Process

Putting everyone to work

Shrimp-Cumin and Lemon Mix

Eggs & Herbs for the Frittata

Onion Frittata - pre-bake

Sautee-ing shrimp with lemon sauce for the scampi pasta

The puree queen (reminiscent of Thanksgiving) - Facebook caption: "COME AT ME, YO!"

Chilled Zucchini Soup with Lemon Shrimp-Cumin and Cilantro Sour Cream

Onion Frittata

Lemony Shrimp Scampi Pasta

Raspberry Tiramisu

Table Settings 

Dinner is Served!

Dessert is Served! plus remnants of the damage done to the rest of dinner

Guests of honor + photo bomber

Chefs

Mother's Day Flowers I picked up spontaneously - South African Sun Burts

Birthday Weekend Eats

For one who generally does not like celebrating birthdays (I mean seriously, what did I do to get born? I really had no choice in the matter...), my impending quarter life mark resulted in a crisis that started well before the month of my actual birthday. To me, and I hear I am not the only one, turning 25 seemed to mean I now officially had to be a "real person." An adult if you will. What that means, I have no idea, but whatever it was/is, it stressed me out to no end. And I worried that I wasn't where I thought I would be...but where was that? I have not a clue. Nevertheless, it caused me much anxiety. 

I almost didn't even do anything to celebrate because I was in such denial, but then the week before, I thought that if I really didn't do anything with anyone, I would come to regret it later in life (ahhh, such insightful forethought on my part!). So that week I made plans for eating and drinking with friends. And as you will see, I did quite a bit of eating...I recently started with a trainer at the gym because I really wasn't making the time for myself and needed that extra push, and when he asked how I ate that weekend, I said..."a lot." To which he responded "well I'm glad you're honest...but...you might want to work on that." So how exactly do I explain to him that I'm fatchowder? haha

Moving on - it started on Friday night with dinner at Yakitori Taisho in St. Marks (I have no photos, so the web link will have to suffice). All the grilled meats on sticks were great, but being such a carb lover, I'd have to say that the Yaki Onigiri (grilled rice balls) with salmon inside were my absolute favorite...even just writing about them now has me craving one. 

The next stop was at Sweet Revenge in LES where I met up with a college friend who's birthday was actually that night, and we always celebrated in school together because our birthdays were so close together and we were the same year (and she actually liked celebrating her birthday).

JENITA

On Saturday, I made plans to go hang out at Perdition and figured whoever had time and wanted to show up could show up - I'd been there before and knew it didn't really get too crowded, so it made it perfect for something casual without the stress of having to make reservations or book tables. 

But let's backtrack to earlier in the day, when we had an actual family meal for the first time in who knows how long...complete with the traditional pigs feet that is eaten for birthdays with noodles for long life. 

mmmm, pigs feet w/ noodles!

Then before heading into the city, I had to stop by Flushing to get my haircut because my bangs were starting to constantly poke me in the eyeballs and I had difficulty keeping them out of my face so that I could see. And a trip to Flushing, means I'm going to eat some delicious Chinese food. My sister and I ended up at the food court in the relatively new New World Mall food court. Between the two of us, we did some damage on a giant bowl of stir fry rice cakes with a mix of meat and veggies that you can pick yourself, mixed in this most awesome hot sauce. 

Before

After

Sunday night dinner, to thank a family friend for helping me get my taxes together (I absolutely despise accounting and doing my taxes), my mom brilliantly suggested that we take her out for dinner at Riviera Grill, which if you couldn't tell from my last post, is now my favorite local "to go" place.

Appetizers Cold Plate

Piping Hot Garlic Bread

Mom's pasta verde

Sister's Parpadelle alla Vodka

My Fettucini Abruzzo

Torta della Nonna

Peach sorbet...back in the peach!

On my actual birthday on Monday, my manager who had wrestled out of me my date of birth, took me out for a nice lunch at Stout before she completely embarrassed me in front of the office. And while we were at lunch, since she told everyone that it was my birthday, and it was the waitress's birthday the day before, I guess they were in a good mood, and we got a most delicious chocolate cake on the house.

Steak Salad

Amazeballs - warm & gooey chocolate cake w/ ice cream

After lunch, at the office, she presented me with a tirimisu cake (also amazing), which I accidentally walked into as they were preparing it, and had the office sing for me, not once, but twice, happy birthday (this was after they already sang at lunch). I actually tried to run out of the room in embarrassment. Then she presented to me Jeremy Lin paraphernalia because her goal is to marry me to him, and a set of nail polish because she knows I am nail obsessed. 

Birthday swag

Playing with new nail polish!

I had class that night, so I kind of had an excuse to not have to do anything, or to not explain to people what I was doing to celebrate. But in a mini-celebration, I bought some sushi from my favorite sushi to go place at LZ Sushi before class to help make the time go by. Seriously, 3 types of rolls (my favorite combo is the spicy tuna combo), 24 pc, plus soup, for $12 - how can you beat that?

Sushi dinner

So I suppose overall, the process of turning 25 wasn't so bad, at least for that weekend. We'll see what it has in store for me the rest of the year. There will most likely be much food involved...I also booked a trip to New Orleans last weekend...FRIED CATFISH HERE I COME!!! :-)