"I think I'm obsessed." I said these words to a friend, tonight. Nevermind that his answer was "you're just now figuring that out?" before he even realized what I was doing. I was actually referring to the fact that I was in the kitchen making my second batch of French macarons in less than 24 hours. He thought I meant in general. Hrmph!! Well okay so perhaps he's right - I do tend to go a little crazy when I find something I like. And boy did I like those macarons!!!
As the last line in my previous post stated - I was ready to try some different flavors! First one on my list: Pistachio! I'm not sure why except that I love the idea of turning out light green cookies. What I hadn't thought about was that the pistachios I had at home, and was ready to make into little soft fluffy macarons, were in shells and salted. So I rolled up my sleeves and started shelling pistachios, washing the salt off, drying them in the oven and 
then grinding them so that they'd push through a sieve. WHEW!
Could I have gotten *gasp* overly confident?? Never! I think I worked the batter too much this time and then didn't bake them long enough. They're not quite dry enough in the center - but boy they sure do taste delicious! I shelled, washed, dried and ground even more pistachios to make a vanilla pistachio buttercream for 
the filling. Yummy! This is so fun! More than anything I love the idea of churning out different colors and flavors of the same type of cookie. To my friends: I'm taking requests - got a favorite macaron flavor? Leave a comment and I'll try it (and if you're local I'll try to get some to you!)
I did it! I made French macarons SUCCESSFULLY on my first try! Hallelujah!! *dancing a jig* First things first - there is a difference between the macaron and the macaroon. The latter being utterly disgusting in my opinion. The former being a delectable mountain of soft chewy sweetness. Big difference. Macaroons are blobs of meringue with nasty coconut mixed in. Macarons (aka. French macaroons) are little sandwich cookies typically varying in creative and beautiful colors and flavors. The macaron is supposed to be very difficult to do successfully but I found it quite easy tonight after all the research I'd done and with a lot of help and trial-and-error done by others first ;)! Basically I've poring through a ton of different food blogs which thankfully go into a lot of depth about how to make these beautiful and delicate little cookies. I even found myself trying to remember all my high school French whilst coming upon a French blog explaining the "how to" - but gave up quickly!
Thank goodness for the above listed bloggers' pages and pages of notes on how to make perfect little macarons. I've been studying these pages for a couple weeks now - planning my attack and putting together a recipe in my head. My best discovery was that I can buy almond meal at gourmet 
grocery stores as opposed to dealing with grinding it up myself to the perfect texture. That is perhaps what saved me. I have to say the "funnest" part was tracing the bottom of a shot glass onto the back of my parchment paper so that I could attempt to make symmetrical cookies to sandwich together. The next "funnest" was piping the batter out of a corner-cut sandwich baggy since I didn't have a large enough tip! I chose to make a bittersweet chocolate ganache filling. It was really simple to make with some heavy cream and good quality bittersweet chocolate.
I forgot to blog about this. And maybe no one cares. But I do - so I'm blogging about it right now! My family's famous Coffee Crunch Cake. This recipe has been in my family for I'm guessing more than 50 years. Something my Auntie Betty found perhaps before, but more likely after, the famous Blum's Bakery (Eastern Bakery and Yasukochi's Sweet Shop have their own versions also) started serving it up to drooling customers. There is a lemon version my family has their paws on as well, but I have never made it. Perhaps I'll need to try it sometime too. But we're talking about the coffee version here - so let's continue. In my humble opinion our coffee crunch cake is better than Eastern Bakery's. Eastern's is a little more like toffee (ie: a little harder and sticks in your teeth) and I can't say I've tried Yasukochi's nor was I around to try Blum's in the mid-20th Century. So as far as I'm concerned this cake is the BEST! Every time I serve it I get rave reviews. But you definitely need to have a sweet tooth to really enjoy it...which I do! Desserts are by far a favorite in my family. At every family party there is roughly 1 dessert per every 2-3 people. That's not really even an exaggeration!
Making my point: this is Thanksgiving 2007. Granted our get together is roughly 80
First I make the sponge cake. This itself takes forever because of the roughly 30 minutes you spend whipping egg yolks and whites (separately). But at least if you have a stand mixer, you can set it to GO and get to little things around the house - only needing to check in periodically. The most fun for me is when I take my sponge cake out of the oven because it's to be cooled upside down over a beer bottle! One time I took the cake out too early and the entire middle of the cake ended up on the counter 
about 3 minutes into "cooling". Eeeks!! While the cake cools I typically get started on the crunch part. This also takes forever - about an hour to come up to the temperature I need it to be. The crunch looks like this (on the left) as it cools. Crazy huh? After it cools completely I have to use a mallet to break it into small pieces... so this gigantic piece of coffee crunch can look a little intimidating!
Finally my favorite part: assembling! I cut the sponge cake into 3 layers, beat up a TON of whipping cream and start in on building my cake. It's certainly not beautiful before I get the whipped cream and crunch onto the outside. But this gives you a view into what's going on inside there! And voila! Coffee Crunch Cake - Lee Aunties style! My cousins enjoyed this cake a couple weeks ago, as did a houseful of friends the next night. That's right I did take a "leftover" cake to a friend's party. Let me tell you... NO ONE complained. :)
While recovering from wrist surgery in early February I was going absolutely stir-crazy thinking about all the things I wanted to do which I could not. Talk about "hard times" making one appreciate things! I hope I never again take my right hand for granted! I found myself scheduling dinner for my cousins, a Girls Night In party and a trip to Mendocino with Mom for our (sometimes yearly sometimes semi-yearly) Girls Trip. Mendocino is still up-and-coming, but this past weekend was the "Girls Night In" party. 
I basically decided that my girls and I needed a night to ourselves to eat, talk about boys, eat, watch chick flicks, drink cocktails and eat. I wish more of my invite list could have made it - especially since my list consisted of some girls I've been promising a dinner party to for a while now! But with 8 of us together, we ended up having a mellow, happy, delicious and intimate night of girl-bonding. I don't know why the men in our lives don't understand the need for nights like these. All we heard from our significant others was "what will you do all night?" "is it going to be an all-night pillow fight?" Do they really think we absolutely need them around in order to have a great time? ;)
I should have tried harder to get an entire
it and then wear it and not have to wait until the Fall or next Winter. Trying my hand at Coachella in Berroco Suede. So far I'm not very excited about the "yarn". It's nylon and sort of like flat ribbon so if it gets twisted while you're knitting (which it certainly does, and I'm actually not anal enough to untwist it while I knit) then it doesn't lie flat. From reading about Berroco Suede I think it will perhaps fluff up a little if it's washed and dried (?) but I won't know for sure until this is done. I'm also a little worried about about the fit. I should have done a more research before starting this pattern 'cuz everything I read now says it runs really big. I'm making the M and I'm worried that I should be making the S. Not even sure what I'll do if it's enormous when I'm done and the yarn alone cost me $50! Wish me luck!
~Leaving the Four Seasons in Singapore for a tiled dorm room on the Infosys campus in Bangalore. (left)
~Seeing cows roam freely in a manner similar to how we see cats enjoying our own neighborhoods. (right)
~Stores after stores of amazingly beautiful, colorful, soft, lightweight pashminas primarily imported from Kashmir. (left)
~Staying within the walls of a multi-billion $$, multi-national corporation all the while being able to glance out my window, over the campus walls to watch people do their laundry in a bucket. (right)
India was unlike anywhere I'd ever been. That's a very cliched remark but it's so accurate. Nothing could have prepared me for the overstimulating sights, far-from-home longings, newly desired flavors, locally stressed caution, "2 hours to travel 10 miles" traffic, or even the fascination with Westerners these very educated workers seemed to possess.
It's completely done! I finished knitting my first piece of clothing - the vest! I realize it's nothing fancy but I'm still really satisfied that I could [not so much complete the knitting, but] figure out the pattern. That's probably the hardest part of knitting for me - figuring out what the pattern's telling you to do. But I suppose it's not always a disaster if you DO miss something. In fact, I actually decreased the front armholes a little more and started the V a little higher, than either called for in the pattern. But I managed to make it work, and now - no one would know. **Must thank Dad for the engineering genes I have floating through my head and hands.**
Now that I’ve worn it and seen these pictures - I think it could stand to be a tad longer. I tend to have a long torso (and short little legs) though, which I should have thought of as I was knitting this sucker. Well, let's see if the more I wear it and stretch it and (essentially) block it after washing it - the more it relaxes.
...but for the love of God - I hope leg-warmers never come back into style!
And just in case anyone wants to hunt these fashion-forward patterns down and get ready for when they cycle back onto the haute-couture runways, here's the cover of the book. Heck, you can message or email me for the patterns and I'll send 'em on over - just cuz I'd love to know and keep in touch with anyone gearing up to essentially make themselves some Fisherman knit pants!
Hope you all had a nice weekend! Mine was great - very relaxing and spent a good amount of time with family which is always nice.
ered something like 10 DIFFERENT (yet very similar) Kahlua cake recipes on recipezaar.com alone! Some with chocolate chips, some with nuts, some with a vodka/Kahlua syrup soaked into the top, some with a Kahlua glaze, some using a yellow cake mix and some instructing to make a chocolate cake from scratch. Whew!! Whatever happened to the one faithful "recipe on the box"? [I LOVES me some Rice Krispies treats!]
