Let Them Eat Cake

My, my, my… I haven’t posted in quite awhile. Granted, I have been extremely busy with the holidays and finals, but I found out that I do have some kind of following on this blog and should not disappoint the people that actually read it (thank you for those who do!). Although I have been busy, that doesn’t mean I haven’t been cooking, baking, and going out to eat. Quite the contrary! I actually have a lot to blog, but rather than put it all in a super long entry that no one should have the patience to read, I’m going to break it down. I’ll to be posting multiple entries in the next few days. Each entry will focus on a certain theme so my writing will be more cohesive than normal! With that being said, my first of many entries this week…

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Like the title? In the past couple of months there have been a couple of occasions where I needed to bake a cake. The first was my roommate’s birthday. Now Miss Samantha is one of my closest friends at USC and quite a special girl indeed. She’s the most put together person in my apartment, yet she’s not afraid to bust a move when we have random dance offs in the bathroom. I think she’s really from the period of Jane Austen and poofy gowns (When’s that? 1800’s?). I figure she time traveled in Doctor Who’s TARDIS. Anywho, I thought I should bake what the girl loves best: red velvet cake. She especially loves the red velvet cake from Lemonade, but I thought I would take a crack at it. Result? Turned out pretty well! It was dryer than the cake Lemonade has, but all in all not too bad. It wasn’t as deep red as I would have liked though. I used the whole red food coloring bottle and it still wasn’t enough! The cream cheese frosting was super yummy and I could help spoon feeding myself the leftover frosting after the cake was all done. My good friend Cristin also helped! She’s quite the baker herself and we plan to have many more baking escapades in the future. Now, I’m not a great judge of red velvet cake. According to Sam and other friends’ comments, the cake was good. Now I say I’m not a great judge of red velvet cake not because I’m bias of my own baking, but because it confuses me. RED VELEVET CAKE CONFUSES ME. You see, most flavors come from something natural. I can eat a grape flavored Jolly Rancher and say it tastes like a grape. However, red velvet is a whole different thing on its own. It’s like chocolate—in fact, it has cocoa in it—but it’s not chocolate cake. And what’s the red coloring for? It’s just for aesthetic reasons, but it throws me off because I assume I should taste cherry or strawberry. I do like red velvet, but I find my eyebrows scrunched together trying to figure out what I’m eating.

Now the next cake-ish thing I got to make were key lime cheesecake bars. My discipler, Kelsey, is the sweetest, most adorable and joyful woman I know. As a going away present (she graduated this winter and is going up to NorCal to get married and start a new life!), I baked her something she pinned on her Pinterest (if you don’t have an account now, you are missing out). I remember her showing me the different things she pinned on her wedding board and one of them were key lime cheesecake bars. I kept a mental note of that and decided to make it for her going away party. After spending sometime with my good friend Google, I finally found the original recipe. However, the website’s instructions were super confusing and I didn’t really trust the recipe. As a result, I combined the original recipe with another cheesecake one I found on Punchfork to make my own (if you’d like the recipe, comment with your email and I’d be happy to send it to you!). The original recipe called for a marble look, but I prefer the leaf design I made. It’s more orderly and dainty, I think. The bars were a hit and I was just so delighted to see Kelsey’s smile and hear her ask for multiple helpings. 


*I have no idea why, but blogspot won't let me upload my key lime cheesecake bar pictures as the collage-thing I made. So, this will have to do...

Love Language

For all the kids who don’t know what love languages are or aren’t familiar with them, love languages are different ways in how you express and receive love. There are five types: words of affirmation, quality time, receiving/giving gifts, acts of service, and physical touch. Although I already wrote this in my first entry (which I think is the best written entry so far—go check it out!), baking and cooking for people is a way I say, “I love you.” Now, I haven’t posted in over month because my workload has been maddening, but that hasn’t stopped me from making food! And every time I cook and bake, I’ve felt this overflow of love pour from myself into others. So my love language to others is giving (edible) gifts and acts of service (I’ll get to how I best receive love in a minute). I’ve especially been cooking and baking for people in my fellowship, Cru (or Campus Crusade for Christ). Whether you’re Christian or not, finding a group of people who just love on you and support you is so wonderful and I’ve found that in Cru. They have filled me with love, and so I naturally desire to want to fill them with food!

When I made pillow cookies last time, I had lots of egg whites left over and the first thing that popped in my head to make were meringue cookies. I know you’ve seen them at fancy French bakeries. I remember as a kid they were the most legit treat ever. They seemed like whipped cream frozen in time and when you bit into them, the whole thing crumbled and melted in your mouth. Meringue cookies were pretty magical to me. Being the college kid that I am and not having many resources, I didn’t have a whisk. Meringue cookies call for lots and lots of whipping so that the egg whites would be frothy. And thus, the fork whisk was created. I ended up tying two forks together and whipped that sucker like mad. I didn’t get the frothy consistency I wanted (it was still a little runny), but my arms were dying and I could only muster so much strength (cooking and baking is a work out, no lie). I used a plastic Ziploc bag (with an edge cut off) to squeeze the egg whites and sugar into nice swirl shapes and dusted them with Oreo crumbs to add flavor. They actually turned out pretty well. They were a tad chewy, but I heard no complaints!

POTLUCK! I’ve grown up opening my house up to people and so I love to invite people over to eat and talk. Thanks to the grace of my roommates, I threw a potluck for Cru and made spicy Italian sausage pasta. This is an original recipe. No Punchfork. I’ve made a similar impromptu pasta for my sister and her boyfriend before, so I knew what flavors I wanted to hit. If you are curious, I’d be happy to share exactly how I made it (pretty simple stuff). But, man, that potluck was amazing. Not only did I get to taste a bunch of other great dishes (it’s fascinating to me how people bring such different flavors to their dishes and how it kind of reflects their personality), but also the fellowship and conversation was awesome. Some pretty hilarious embarrassing moments were shared and laughter filled the room. Not only were our stomachs filled that night, but also were our hearts (wow, I think I even vomited a little in my mouth… but cheesiness is sometimes needed, and it is so true). 

Now, my aunt’s 50^th birthday…excuse me, I mean 25^th birthday… came around and my sister and I decided to cook for her and my grandma as a treat. I ended up making shrimp scampi. I’ve never worked with shrimp before. I love seafood and know how to peel the little buggers, but deveining? Say what?! Peeling, decapitating, and deveining the shrimps was the nasty part, but everything else went as planned according to the recipe on Punchfork (did I mention that I love that website?). My sister made a killer Asian pear tart that night as well. It was beautiful and oh so delicious (maybe I’ll make it in the near future myself). Although I do love the whole cooking process, my favorite part of that night was being able to cook beside the grand master, my grandma. She also loves people through her food and, boy, is she good at it. What really touched me was when she said she really enjoyed eating my pasta. I just remember thinking, “Wow.” I encourage all of you to go cook with loved ones. On a side note, the recipe calls for two lemons, but I would use just one. I thought the pasta was a bit too sour.

Last time I baked for Cru’s big group meeting I came with pillow cookies. This time: pumpkin ginger snaps! I had a bit of time on my hands this week, so I thought, “why not?!” The weather right now (biting cold… well biting for SoCal) really calls for holiday flavors and so I thought these cookies were super apropos. These fluffy delights were super fun to make and I got good feedback on them. One of the great perks of baking things with pumpkin, cinnamon, ginger, and cloves is that your whole apartment will smell like Christmas. I am so ready for winter break and the smell the ginger snaps made me want to curl up in a warm spot and listen to Christmas classics. But alas, I had to pull them out in the oven in 13 minutes and head over to Cru right away!

Lastly, I end with a chocolate cake. It was one of my apartment mate’s 20^th birthday and I found a recipe for, “the best chocolate sheet cake ever.” Now, a sheet cake is great and all, but it ain’t a birthday cake or at least it doesn’t look like one. My solution: put it in a round cake pan! I used the same recipe, but just had to bake the cake longer (using the round pan made the cake thicker) so it was baked all the way through. On top of the cake, I also made chocolate frosting from scratch. Although the original recipe calls for pecans, I used walnuts ‘cause I had a lot of walnuts lying around and it still tasted great.

Referring back to the theme of love language, I’ve already explained my love language to others, but the way I receive love the best is through words of affirmation. Hands down. Although I don’t cook and bake for compliments, it is so nice to hear when what you’ve made tastes good. Honestly, someone can just make my day by appreciating my food. But if I do make food that tastes out of whack, TELL ME. We all give and receive love in different ways and I’m just glad people have been so receptive towards my food. I’ll keep them coming.

*Looking back on this entry, this is so formal! It’s much more orderly than my other entries, but it doesn’t flow well. Well, you can only do so much when running on little sleep. At least I know that most (if not all) people are focusing on my pictures than my words.

Cookie Monster, EAT THIS!

Wowzers. Two food blog entries in a week. Now that’s cray cray.

Well, I baked pillow cookies this past Wednesday and it was pretty crazy. While the whole experience is fresh, I thought I’d post. In case you kids don’t know what a pillow cookie is… a pillow cookie is a chocolate chip cookie with a stuffed brownie inside. It’s a pretty epic. Now the thing is because you need to bake brownies and cookies, you need a good amount of time. I was foolish and thought I could bake them within three hours. Now, three hours is a lot of time, but I was trying to bake for my entire fellowship (and that’s a lot of people) and you need to let the cookie dough sit in the fridge for an hour. Oh, and on top of that… I don’t have many baking tools at my disposal (a mixer would be nice for Christmas...). So everything was hand whipped and stirred. It was my work out for the week. I ended up buying brownie mix for the center (which kind of kills me because I prefer to make everything from scratch), but the cookie dough was all scratch. I didn’t end up being able to finish baking all my cookies before my big fellowship meeting, but still was able to bring more than a dozen. I had a couple dozen waiting for me back home though. As a result… I delivered the next day. As soon as my design class was over, I ran across campus hand delivering cookies. Despite the craziness, it was quite fun and I got to catch up with a lot of people. I’ve gotten really great compliments on the pillow cookies so I totally recommend anyone to make ‘em. I mean c’mon… a brownie in a cookie. That’s hardcore.

Amidst the Chaos

I realize this is an extremely long entry! Feel fee to break it up and take bathroom breaks in between each paragraph. 
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So much chaos has been happening lately that I’ve been leaving cooking in the dust. Although I haven’t had my midterms yet (I’m one of the lucky few who only has one round of midterms), my design class has been killing me (200 drawings assigned over the weekend… madness. Madness? THIS IS SPARTA!!! – I had to…). But I’m back!

A few weeks ago, my friend Kathryn and I went to Nickel Diner. I bought eat.shop los angeles and it’s one of the restaurants it recommended. Just the fact that “diner” was in its title made me think of a soda shop, lots of red stripes, cherries, and just nostalgic ol’ America. Well… it wasn’t like that. Rather, it was hipster (should have know… oh LA, you and your hipster ways). But those expectations didn’t hinder my experience there. When we asked for the dessert menu, our lovely tattooed waiter presented us with a tray of deserts. A FREAKING TRAY! We gazed with delight and a glimmer of drool came to say hi (weird visual). We decided to be bold and try their last bacon donut and salt peanut cake. Now the bacon donut is self-explanatory, but the cake… it has PO-TA-TO chips in it. That gave the cake an extra crunch, but you couldn’t really taste the potato. Both desserts were quite tasty and a little bit savory. Kathryn and I kept on trying to figure out what they used to make the icing of the cake out of. It was light… but then had this interesting butter consistency when you cut into it. But instantly, it melted in your mouth. Overall, great experience and it helps to have good company. I would love to go back and try actual dishes. They smelled and looked so good.

Now for the banana bread I made. Good ol’ PunchFork was there for me again. One of my roommates had some brown bananas that needed lovin’ so I decided to look up a recipe for banana bread. The recipe I used is actually called, “banana banana bread.” Now I was in midst of design class chaos, I hadn’t cooked all week (partially due to not having enough time, but mostly due to the fact that I couldn’t get to Ralphs… lesson folks, you need a car in LA). But I had this urge to make something and get it done that night. Cooking and baking is very therapeutic for me (and very beneficial to my friends around me).  Now, I think I went a bit crazy, but I decided to make 24 servings. That means I need ten bananas. Well, my roommate only had three brown ones, so I ran over to the sketchy Superior market next door. Surprisingly, they didn’t have brown bananas (all you USC students, you’d think they would have worse produce there, but it’s actually not that bad). Now that was bad for me, but good for everyone else. I looked for the most jacked up bananas and headed home. In less than two hours I had four loaves of banana bread. Pretty tasty too. It wasn’t as sweet as I would have liked (because of the not-as-ripe bananas), but still good stuff. Oh, and I forgot to add the walnuts into the dough, so I ended up sprinkling them on top with a bunch of brown sugar. Brown sugar crusts are the best.

And lastly, I had my first experience with Brazilian BBQ this past weekend! For all you LA kids, it’s dineLA the next two weeks. That means a bunch of restaurants (especially swanky ones) will create a set menu and it’s cheaper than what it would originally cost. My friend Kathryn and I wanted to take advantage of this wonderful event (we are determined to become foodies). She picked the restaurant, Libra Brazilian Steakhouse, and I made the reservation. Despite attempting to invite a huge group of people, a couple of our friends ended up joining us in the end. No worries, it was still a lot of fun. Now back home, I have some brothers at my church who make a big deal about Brazilian BBQ. From what I understood, it was a man’s meal. Lots of MEAT. Libra is a pretty nice restaurant. I don’t know if I expected a cave or something… but it was swanky and definitely a place a guy should take a girl out to (First of all, the girl will love the ambiance. Secondly, the guy can eat as much meat as he wants. So a win-win situation). We started with the salad bar that was pretty impressive. There was marinated mushrooms, smoked salmon on a slice of potato… and to class it up, no ranch dressing. Just olive oils (there were like five different kinds) and different vinegars. You know you’ve hit it big when there are only olive oil and vinegar dressings. There were also hot sides, but I honestly wasn’t impressed. It wasn’t that hot and the flavors were a bit weak. But now let’s get to the MEAT (pun anyone?). Men walked around with sticks of meat and asked if you wanted any. Despite having these cards that indicated how we wanted our meat to be cooked, it really didn’t make a difference. So here’s what I think I had: house special picanha (sirloin cap), Brazilian sausage, smoked sausage, tri-tip, top sirloin, BBQ chicken, garlic picanha, chicken hearts, pineapple with cinnamon (Yes, that was on a stick. No it’s not a meat), ribeye steak, filet mignon, skirt steak, and prime ribs. Honestly, it’s a blur now so I’m not too clear on exactly what I ate. Most of the meats were delicious though. The chicken was soooo tender and the garlic picanha was superb. I love garlic, so that really hit the spot. I wasn’t going to go for the chicken hearts, but one of the guys at my table got like four and we all decided to take a bite. According to him, it tasted like dried olives. I honestly only tasted garlic. As for dessert, two of us had sorbet (lemon, blood orange, and passion fruit) and the other two had chocolate mousse. Now in the picture you see below, we all look pretty happy and alive. But let me tell you, once we sat in the car… it was over. At least for the guys. They were laying back, mouths open, holding their stomachs and groaning a bit. It was a good night. (Sorry for the lack of photos at Libra. I felt like enjoying my dinner and company and taking pictures would ruin that. Ah, the balance between work and play.) 

I just wanted to leave on one last note. Although I don’t have pictures of it (I need to get better at documenting the food I cook and eat), I have made these fruit crumb bars a couple of times and they are DELICIOUS. Sadly, I can’t say that it’s my original recipe, but I do add a good helping of brown sugar on top to create a crunchier crust. I used raspberry the first time and strawberry the second (blueberries were too expensive or out of season when I made it). I’ve gotten a lot of complements for them, so I highly recommend you to try it out (Men can bake too!).

Next recipe to conquer: pillow cookies!

"I love you"

It’s been a few months since the birth of my food vlog idea—exploring Los Angeles’ eateries and reviewing them via film. I came up with Chugga Chugga Chew Chew (yep, I’m adding extra g’s after being told by my roommate it looked like “choo-ga choo-ga”) when I was on the verge of insanity from studying for my finals. Without a car and film camera (which, I swear, I’ve been meaning to buy) this vlog isn’t going anywhere. BUT! I have been cooking! So I don’t have the means to drive all over LA every weekend to rate restaurants, but cooking is just as good and even more rewarding. The thing is food isn’t just about eating to satisfy the gurgling monster within (who won’t shut up when it’s awkwardly quiet in your class… anyone?). Food is about using every God-given sense and thoroughly enjoying something that sustains you and brings happiness. But (I apologize for using “but” so excessively) most importantly: food is about bringing people to together. That’s why I cook. Food is a way I serve others and show my appreciation and love. So whenever you’re eating my food, I’m trying to tell you, “I love you.” Cheesy? Yes. But so true, and who doesn’t like some cheese now and then? Here’s some grub I’ve had a pleasure of making this year (sadly, not everything I made has been photographed. I made a mean lemon chicken last night…). If you want the recipes, I can look them up for you. I got most, if not all, of my recipes from punchfork.com, who is currently my best friend. Oh, and every dish has turned out pretty well. I’ll let you know if something is a total fail.

Just to note, I have a very weird writing style. I’m a bit scatterbrained so I like to say whatever comes to my mind. Oh, and I try to be funny—I have a sarcastic sense of humor, so don’t take anything too seriously! Feel free not to laugh. Or rather, laugh at me. I’m good either way.

I will start the LA restaurant vlogs soon though. Feel free to comment and give me any suggestions, whether it be places I should visit or topics you want me to cover. I’m already planning a boba episode! 


UPDATE:

My awesome roommate reminded me that I already created a logo for the site that has the words “chuga chuga” in it… so if I were to add g’s, I would have to remake my logo. So, be as it may, CHOO-GA CHOO-GA is here to stay. If it really bothers me… we’ll see. I like my gold toothed friend on the left. Oh, and for those who are totally lost right now. My blog is pronounced "chug-gah chug-gah chew chew." Please tell me you get the pun...