Best Buttery Cinnamon Cookies

These melt-in-your-mouth diet-breakers were so good. You just HAVE to try this recipe. Actually a girl at work did try them and it worked for her too, so now it's not only good, but tried and true.

So I pulled this recipe off allrecipes.com coz I had too much cinnamon lying around.

Enjoy! Oh and they stored for DAYS afterwards. I just put them in my trusty tupperware and it was good for like over a week!

Chinese Creamed Corn Drop Soup

My friend Sharon LOVES creamed corn soup. So do I. And it's such an easy comfort food for a nice quite night in, or a late night snack. I love to make it nice and thick and loaded with real good stuff, imitation crab and corn! And the latest, which i think adds a nice touch and does wonders to make this a real stew: peas.

Here goes: 1/2 C of frozen corn and peas, thaw and drain. 5 sticks of imitation crab, drain and cut into pieces -- depending on how you like your crab pieces, cut it accordingly. Sometimes I like my soup in a more "stewy" texture, then I chop up the crab finer, so the pieces are suspended throughout. On days I like to eat the crab pieces individually, then I cut them bigger and the soup tends to be a bit more runny. If you've got canned REAL crabmeat, ever better!

Put one can of cream of corn in a small saucepan. Add 1 can of water. let it boil. In the meanwhile, get one egg of our the fridge. Whip it up with a dash of white pepper and small splash of sesame oil (nothing makes chinese food taste chinese like sesame oil). give the egg a good whip.

Once the soup boils, remove from heat, stir gently while dropping egg in a steam at a great height. As you stir, you'll see that the egg is formed into different sized strips, giving them that nice texture of a good drop soup. Add the peas, corn, and crab, give it a good stir, put it back on the heat for like 20 seconds so everything heats up nice.

There you have it! It's a meal in itself, but if you like a good "white people" touch, eat it with wheat thins, like i did.

Homemade French Baguettes

I have a friend, Mike, who made French baguettes in university. He lived next door to me and he made all kinds of goodies. However, this one had eluded him even during exams! (During exams, the number of baked goods, dinners, cleanest res houses goes up exponentially, as do any methods for procrastination). He had tried the first time and we both didn't have the patience to wait all day... so it didn't turn out so well, hard as rock.. all the way through. This memory inspired me to try this elusive recipe -- although I found my own recipe online...albeit in 9 parts.. Annoying, yet .. helpful!

Follow it exactly, and you'll get awesome baguettes! Hard on the outside, bubbly and soft on the inside. One tip: Be VERY careful with the hot water!

Enjoy!

Updated: BBQ Cha-sui flavoured wings!

So we had an itch for MORE WINGS! And it turned out even better than the last!

I've made it a second time with slight variation on the original recipe.

In addition to cha sui sauce, add 1 tbsp soy sauce all over and sprinkle of ginger (powder or grated if you have it). Bake 10 mins at 425 F then turn (after you flip them, slather on more of the remaining sauce), then increase the heat to 450 F and bake for another 10.
This time then were sweeter, redder, and even MORE scrumptious than before!

Another secret is the use parchment paper! I've tested it with just the pan, with aluminum foil (from my British-Chinese tongue: A-LU-MIN-NI-UM), and honestly parchment wins out everytime! and easy clean up too! (even easier than aluminium foil if you believe it)

It keeps in the fridge for FIVE DAYS! Of course I put it in a tempered glass container with a plastic snap lid! It's the best kind of storage!

Anyway, enjoy!

Fudgy Chocolate Brownie "Muffins"

This is a recipe from Joy of Baking left over from my "baking frenzy" earlier this year... I think I baked something every night for two weeks and fattened everyone up at work.....i'm sure people were pleased at the time, but was definitely in total regret/guilt mode for eating super rich baked goods for two weeks... anyway, all in all it was worth it.

So the fudgy brownie recipe... for portability sake, I baked them in muffin cups.. hence "quotations" around "muffins". .. I have to say that I think the separation into muffin cups dried out the recipe more than I like. Stick to the recipe and use a "real" "muffin" "pan".

BBQ Cha-sui flavoured wings!

Honestly, how easy was this?

2 lbs of wingettes (I got these at T and T Supermarket, they give you the option of buying just the middle part of the wing -- just so happens to be my favourite). ACtually most asian grocery stores will have this.

Lee Kum Kee Cha sui sauce.

Instructions:
1. wash and pat dry the wings
2. mix generously with cha sui sauce
3. bake at 425F for 20 - 25 minutes. turn over once at the 10 minute mark

Voila!

I think Ian and I finished this whole batch just the two of us.....yikes! weight watchers, beware!

Chinese Homemade Pork Loaf

Sounds and looks gross, BUT this is the taste of home for me.

This is my comfort food. Anyone who come from a Chinese family knows what this is and it's what we eat at home. It's not something you typically serve to guests, it's what you eat when you're with the people you love the most. This is completely authentic.

1 lb. ground pork (lean i like, but medium is ok too)
1/4 tsp white pepper
1/2 tsp sesame oil
1 egg
3 Shitake mushrooms (chinese kind, it's dried and it's black, usually packaged from cellophane
1 tbsp dried shrimp (chinese kind, also dried, and also package in cellophane)
2 tbsp of Shiitake mushroom soaking liquid

Prepare Ahead: (I usually do this part before work and when i come home it's ready to go; i think it probably takes 3 hours to soak.)
- The Shiitake mushrooms need to be soaked until they are thoroughly soft and soaked through. Preserve the soaking liquid
- The dried shrimp also need to be soaked until soft. No need to keep the liquid for this.

- Once the soaking process is done, take the mushroom or shrimp (they are treated the same way) squeeze out the liquid, and chop into small cubes.

Set up your steamer. For me I use either a steaming basket or a steaming "platform" (i.e. a little metal stand that goes into the pot you do the steaming in). Tip: make sure that before you start to heat up the water that your steamer stand/steamer container will fit! It isn't fun to try to fit a steamer over boiling hot water! Make sure that the water is boiling as you place your pork loaf onto the steamer.

Mix all the ingredients together, Steam for 15 minutes

Serve with Rice! Ta-da, how easy was that?

Aside: The Smell Test
So since the meat is raw -- the question is, how do you know it's seasoned properly? Give it a smell. I don't mean the wafting technique from chemistry class -- I mean, put your face to the dish and give it a good wiff. The way it smells is the way it should taste. It's not exactly the same (just b/c we're human and no two senses do the same thing) but it's pretty close. Just a trick from my mom to me to you!

The consistency is less dense than traditional western meatloaf and much more savoury. We've just had the most perfect Chinese Porkloaf and just wanted to share this recipe with you!
Enjoy!

Finnish Cardamom Coffeecake

So this is one of the things on my list of things to make. As soon as my silicone easy storage bundt cake pan fell into my hands (santa was good to me this x'mas) I was able to get this show on the road.

Here is the recipe.

I was very happy with how this turned out although it could 've stayed in the oven way longer. Also there was way way way too much wafer crumbs. Even though this made a really good topping, i think 5 wafers crushed would have been enough.

This lasted ian and I like more than a week. We're still eating it!

--

Where did I learn about cardamom cake? I would've never thought about the combination of flavours (nor about baking a bundt cake) -- There was a potluck at work and b/c we're in toronto where there are so many people from all parts of the world, I was privileged to I didn't actually get the recipe although I did approach the lady and offer to buy it off her an start a franchise. We never connected b/c of the holidays and I looked up the recipe online instead. I'll have to go back and ask her (I'm call her "my sensei" of cardamom finish coffee cake) and see if she approves!

Wow, looks-good chocolate chip banana bread!

It's been a while since my last post, but I've been baking steadily, just not documenting !! (booo)

So here is the latest -- banana bread, it's just come straight out of the oven, we'll have to wait till tomorrow morning to see if this is good.

By looks alone, it's better than the banana bread muffins I made in November -- but this is a new year, isn't it? We'll see if it's as good as it looks tomorrow.

Oh yeah, and here is the recipe. The only thing that I did that's outside the instructions, is melting the butter so it mixes in easier.