Labor Day Meal

My mom always makes a huge cookout on Labor Day, so I decided I wanted BBQ style food too! I made myself 3 of my favorites (all things I've previously made on this blog) A black bean burger, with sweet potato fries, and sweet spicy veggie salad. I also had a bottle of cider (Angry Orchard is my preferred American brew). This time around I had my black bean burger with guacamole, bbq sauce, sautéed red onions, and smoked gouda cheese. Yes it was amazing. I've also gotten so much better at making sweet potato fries. I've stopped steaming the potato in the microwave first, also I've gotten better at cutting them cleanly. Cook around 400F for 25 minutes and they're perfectly crispy. 

All in all a really fun and yummy meal of old favorites. Nothing really special to report, other than this was my first kinda involved meal in the new apartment. Our kitchen is much smaller, so that has taken some getting used to. Good thing I got to practice by sharing a kitchen with limited surfaces with 6 other people in Oz! 

21st Birthday Cupcakes!!!

My twenty first birthday day was yesterday, June 4th. Usually, my birthday falls at the time where I'm back in Chicago after the end of the semester and celebrate with my high school friends, and of course, my family. This is actually the first time I haven't been in Chicago with my family on my birthday. However, my parents managed to make it special even half a world away. They had cupcakes sent over to our house from the Cupcake Parlour in West End, which I blogged about months ago! In fact, my sister referred to that when picking flavors, which is why there were 5 Turkish Delight cupcakes, because I had expressed my love for that cupcake in my previous post. They were even better than I remembered, I really really like them :) And the Tim Tam cupcakes were really cool as well, perfect for a birthday in Australia. My family coordinated with my housemates to get them delivered to the house. The Cupcake Parlour kinda messed up and had them delivered 3 hours early, so I was the one who came to the door to get them. I was still really surprised and it was wonderful, but we couldn't help but laugh because there was a note on the box that said to deliver them between 1-2 and they came at 10 :P The surprises didn't end there! Apparently my parents also had balloons sent to the house (this time when I was at class) and my housemates surprised me with the balloons and a cupcake with a candle in it later that day! It so nice of everyone. 

That night I then went out to dinner with friends at the club and restaurant Cloudland in Fortitude Valley. We had some wonderful Italian food, and an AMAZING apple-pear sangria. I wasn't really taking food pics because I was just trying to enjoy the night instead, but take my word for it the food was splendid. The highlight was the pumpkin ricotta tortellinis in brown butter sauce. Also the decor at Cloudland is the coolest thing ever. It's full of feathers, leaves, and crystal chandeliers! After dinner we ended up going to the RE, one of the UQ student bars, because it's the place to be on a Wednesday. It was really great because a bunch of other people I knew were there as well so it was a great place to drink and dance, and ultimately end the evening. It was such a wonderful way to spend a birthday, and it was so cool to be able to celebrate in Australia!

Passover Dark Chocolate Almond Cookies

Okay, I am so so so proud of these and how they turned out!!!! This idea formed as I roamed the grocery store with growing exasperation in my quest to find cheap, healthy, passover-frindly snacks for my next 4 days of travel. I roamed up and down the nut and dried fruit sections looking for something to tickle my fancy. In the process, I noticed almond meal. And instantly thought of passover desserts (many are made with almond meal as a substitute for flour). And then another thought struck me. I would be fun to make passover cookies as a plan snack for me and my traveling companions. I quickly bought the almond meal, eggs, dark chocolate chips (along with a fruit and almond mix that I finally found appealing!), and headed home to start baking. I only had 4 hours before I was supposed to head to the airport so I hoped to do this quickly. With a quick check online to make sure that I wasn't totally off base with the almond meal thing, I set to making my cookies. I combined 2 egg whites and 1 whole egg in a bowl. Then I added 250g of almond meal, 3/4 cup of sugar, 1/2 teaspoon of vanilla, and 1 teaspoon of cinnamon. I stirred this together until I had a gooey dough. Then I added a generous helping of dark chocolate chips. Basically, until I could add no more :) I then made ball like cookies on my pan and stuck them in the oven at 400 F or 200 C for 20 minutes. This was the perfect amount of time to cook these since the outsides got crisp, but the insides stayed gooey. It's always better to cook cookies for shorter than longer in my opinion. Better underdone, than overdone! After letting them cool for an hour or so, I packed these up in a big plastic bag for the plane. They were amazing, the chocolate almond, cinnamon, and vanilla mixed perfectly. The soft and gooey insides tasted really almondy, and had a wonderful consistency. These were so yummy that I'd eat them even if it isn't passover! Really proud that I was able to improvise homemade cookies on my own, and especially so since they were special holiday cookies!

Matzah Herb Flatbread

The first night of Passover is usually spent at a large dinner/ceremony called a seder. Seders are a way for family to come together and celebrate the story of Passover. Unfortunately, my family isn't in Brisbane, so no seder for me. Instead I made the most classic of passover dishes with a twist! Matzah Pizza is the beloved passover food, basically pizza sauce and cheese on matzah instead of pizza dough. Not so great compared to actual pizza, but good compared to other passover food. I did not have any pizza sauce so I decided to make a sophisticated matzah flatbread instead. I Spread olive oil mixed with tuscan herbs, parsley, and garlic pepper on the matzah. Then a bit of mozzarella cheese. Next I added sliced zucchinis and shallots. Then I topped it with more mozzarella and some shredded parmesan. Lastly I added some parsley for color and additional taste. Then I cooked it at 200 degrees Celsius for 10 minutes. 

Once it the cheese was melted and the edges were crisp I took it out. It was amazing. Extremely flavorful with with perfect ratio of cheese to herbs and veggies. I had it with a glass of Pink Moscato, a sweet grapefruit flavored rosé, since you are traditionally supposed to drink 4 glasses of wine at a seder. I only had one glass of course, but it was nice to celebrate the holiday with a glass of wine with dinner. 

Bailey's Coffee Blondies

As a continuation of the St. Patty's day treats we made last week I present the Bailey's Coffee Blondies. Blondies are brownies but without the chocolate, which is better than you'd expect. For these ones we added instant coffee to make them coffee flavored, as well as moister. Like the cheesecakes we used an online recipe from another website, http://www.kitchentreaty.com. We made no changes to it so it's 100% this recipe linked below. The Bailey's for this one was in the frosting not the brownies, I think next time I would add it to both. Also The frosting was not as fluffy as I would have liked because we have no power baking tools here. I really want to have my sister make this frosting for me when I get home because she is the frosting queen! The one we made was a little sugary for my taste. Otherwise these were awesome! I loved eating them with coffee in the mornings for the week following. Here's the recipe that we used: http://www.kitchentreaty.com/baileys-coffee-blondies/. Pretty simple and turned out really well. These were really cakey brownies and I like them that way as long as they aren't too dry (which these weren't) so I loved them!

Bailey's Cheesecake with Tim Tam Crust

Last week was St. Patrick's Day, and one of my housemates found all of these wonderful irish alcohol inspired recipes online. We decided to choose two and have a house baking night. The first one was a Bailey's cheesecake, which is the first cheesecake that I have ever made. Turns out, not as hard as I expected!!! Credit where credit is due we basically followed a recipe from http://www.baked-in.com, but modified it a bit. The way we modified it was that we used Tim Tams for the crust. I haven't blogged about these amazing Aussie cookies yet because I'm waiting to do a huge Tim Tam post when I've tasted every flavor, so it's coming I promise!! All you need to know is that Time Tams are the Aussie version of an Oreo, If an Oreo was twice as big, rectangular in shape, had chocolate cream filling, AND was covered in chocolate. Basically, 1 million times better than an Oreo and seriously addicting. I had the great I idea to mash up some dark chocolate Tim Tams and mix them with butter to make Tim Tam Crust. It turned out really well, and added an Australian twist to the desert. The cheesecake was really great, it tasted strongly of Bailey's (though not alcohol) and was creamy and rich. Since we used an online recipe I'm going to link it here: http://www.baked-in.com/2012/09/18/baileys-cheesecake-cupcakes/. Note that we made 3 major changes. We used Tim Tams for the crust, we didn't use cupcake wrappers, and we mixed the cake uniformly (no non-baliey's layer for us).

Thoughts on this Dessert:

• We let it sit in the fridge for an hourish, but letting it sit overnight is better because then it is super consolidated and cold.
• We were working without an electronic blender so it took us a while to make the cheesecake batter, so at home this would be quicker. 
• We greased the pan with butter because we din't have baker's joy, and you could taste it (I was not a fan of the extra butter taste) so definitely would make sure we have baker's joy next time.
• I really want to make cheesecake again now that I know how, I'm thinking taro or match cheesecake are on the list for future endeavors, as is pumpkin :)

Loved these soooooo much they were really fun and delicious!!! Check out the next post for the other St. Patty's Day dessert we made :)

Holiday Marshmallow Taffy

 This was a holiday take on my yummy marshmallow taffy recipe. I had a lot of crushed candy cane from the popcorn I made last month, and I thought it would be yummy to add to this dessert! So instead of using peanut butter (which I usually highly recommend to get the consistency right), which doesn't go well with peppermint, I decided to tweak the recipe. I used Nutella and melted chocolate instead! Since this is a holiday version, I used chocolate gelt! Gelt is chocolate coins that are a traditional Hanukkah candy, and since I made this on the 6th night of Hanukkah I thought it was a perfect addition to this recipe. It turned out surprisingly well and made me very happy :)

Thoughts on this Recipe:

• I broke my own have to use peanut butter rule and it still turned out well, so I guess melted chocolate and Nutella attain similar constancy. 
• I love this dessert because I created totally on my own, and I like that I can tweak it so many ways.
• The peppermint makes it a lot prettier! I wish there was a way to make this dessert look presentable because its so good that I want to share it with others, but it looks so icky :P

Such a fun way to start off December! I'm excited that I could find a fun and creative way to use the gelt that I got for Hanukkah this year, I'll be remembering this one next year.

Peppermint Bark Popcorn

Earlier this week I had a movie screening for one of my classes and the professor brought this cinnamon peppermint white chocolate popcorn. It was amazing, and I thought that it seemed like a fairly easy thing to make. This Saturday I got a chance to try it out. One of my friends and I had a scary movie marathon so I thought it would be a perfect chance to try the recipe.

I wanted to use a flavor profile that I knew I liked so I choose the festive chocolate peppermint one. I used white chocolate and bittersweet chocolate for this recipe. I melted each and drizzled them on the popcorn, then added crushed up candy cane bits. Then we mixed the treat and stuck it in the fridge to harden. Besides a slight microwave malfunction when we were in the middle of heating the chocolate, it was a very easy recipe to do! It was a yummy way to spice up normal popcorn, and we had a ton of extra left over.  My friend pointed out as we were making it that it reminded her of William-Sanoma's Peppermint Bark. I completely agree with her, which is why I named it thus :)

 Thoughts on this recipe:

• I don't usually like white chocolate but I think it actually goes extremely well with popcorn, so I wanted to include it in this recipe.
• We used buttered popcorn for this, but it might also be nice to try with kettle corn. I liked the sweet/salty that the buttered added, but the kettle might be nice too.
• I added peppermint bits after adding the white chocolate and then also after adding the dark chocolate. This allowed the peppermint to stick to the popcorn when the chocolate was melted. 
• We melted the chocolate for about 2:30 minutes each.
• We stuck the popcorn in the fridge for 20 minutes. I think that in the future it actually could use at least an hour in the fridge. 

 This was such a fun thing to make and eat! It's really fun that I'm at the point where I can take inspiration for random places and actually make something out of it. Also this treat reminds me of winter, which makes me excited for the holiday cheerfulness that is on it's way!