H Mart - Upper Darby, Pennsylvania

I went to H Mart with TJ and CL. To get there from Penn, you take the L train to 69th St. Terminal, followed by a 5-minute walk. Sadly, we got on the wrong side of the SEPTA station, and had to get transfer tickets! I've never travelled West on SEPTA. I actually wanted to walk to 69th St, but apparently it's really shady (and it's about 3 miles?). The furthest west I've walked is to 50th St. (Baltimore and Market).

H Mart is a grocery store that primarily sells Korean, Japanese, and Chinese food, although there is other imported food. I was a bit let down by H Mart. Although there are many vegetables and foods not found elsewhere (green mango, yucca, etc.) it's quite pricey compared to the supermarkets in Chinatown. On the second floor, there is a food court with four restaurants and one overpriced bakery with pastries that are all pre-wrapped and made elsewhere (they don't have an oven; they do have expensive bubble tea and smoothies). There is a sushi restaurant, two Korean food restaurants, and one Korean-Chinese restaurant. I don't remember the names of them, but we each bought food from a different restaurant (except the sushi one). I had lunch and dinner there, while they (having stuffed themselves with pancakes and eggs earlier) just had dinner. We were there from 2 to 6 pm!

At the restaurant closest to the window, CL got a seafood noodle soup (and I got some kimbap). It came with radish kimchi that had sweet pickled garlic in it. CL didn't really like it, so she swapped her dish with TJ's. TJ had gotten a "noodle with seafood and black bean sauce" from the restaurant furthest from the window, but it turned out that there was pork in it! TJ is a pescetarian, so swapping was quite convenient. Her meal also came with radish kimchi. I got thick noodles and vegetables (number 25) from the middle restaurant, which had a yellow shop front. It was really good, and came with cabbage kimchi, miso soup, stewed potatoes! I was so surprised because the bowl is enormous; my chopsticks are shown on the bowl for comparison. I saw that other people also got these giant bowls. The bowls are about half filled with raw veggies and cold rice noodles, which were nice and chewy. There was a bottle of spicy sauce for me to add to my own taste. It was around $8.50 with tax, as were most dishes there. 

The kimbap was pretty good too, but the soy sauce with chili was really salty definitely not umami. $4 with tax. I know there's imitation crab it in...but I ate it anyway (we shared it; I also ended up eating squid that was going to get thrown away because neither TJ nor CL liked it).

H Mart itself is a decent size, has many snacks that I'd like to try, many varieties of miso, and kilos of kimchi (the smallest size was a pound, the largest was a bag the size of a microwave). The produce section offers a styrofoam backed and plastic-wrapped tray of nearly-going-bad-veggies for 99c, so I bought about 12 small potatoes, 6 Asian eggplants, and 4 zucchinis for $4.96. I just cut off the bad squishy parts (about 10% of the veggies).

 (not sure what it is...) 

(They're twice the size of avocados, and have smooth skin)

I also got some sort of mugwort cake with beans which looked so delicious! I thought it'd be sweet, but it's actually tasteless (like Chinese steamed buns without any filling). I've never had mugwort before, and I'm a little disappointed because I couldn't taste anything different than a normal floury-bread thing. I wish it had been sold individually, but it was not bad.

I also found something that I used to love when I was a kid: ready-to-eat crunchy instant noodles! It's not the same brand, but basically you can add the seasoning, crush the noodles, and then eat them the way you eat chips. There was a brand in Hong Kong that had Snoopy on the package, and came with a Snoopy sticker. I LOVED them. I got the hot rice flavour (but there was also beef and barbecue flavour). It's a bit pricey (99c) but, man, nostalgia!

Also, there was lots of vegetarian pudding. I didn't get any because I had bought some Kingo Pudding by Cocon at Chinatown recently, and here they are (they taste really good frozen)

Although these look like jelly made with gelatin, they're actually solid due to seaweed extract! Here are the ingredients for the pineapple one: water, sugar, nata de coco, milk powder, pineapple juice, seaweed extract, vegetable oil, citric acid, flavour, emulsifier, colouring (including tartrazine E102), and FD&C yellow No. 5. The lychee one doesn't include the last two ingredients, because, well, it's white. I'm not a fan of the pineapple one because it was too sweet, but I bought it for science (and for trying new things).

For those who want REAL pineapple jelly, then, pick these! Why can't gelatin jelly have pineapple? Well, pineapple has this enzyme called bromelain, a protease that breaks down proteins (our duodenum (small intestine) has trypsin, which is also a protease, which breaks down proteins during digestion). The protease breaks down gelatin (collagen protein), so the jelly won't set. I was so astounded when I learned this in high school Biology. The jelly itself is softer, though.
Ultimately, I wouldn't take SEPTA all the way to H Mart regularly, even though there are some pretty neat veggies there. Chinatown is the way to go for now for me!

Bubble Tea Cake - Updated!

Below: Left: Cake Assembly Version II, Right: Cake Assembly Version I

Want cookies? Check these out!

Last time, my bubble tea cake had way too much baking soda, so I remade it today to ensure that my recipe is valid, with less baking soda. Here is the complete updated recipe with some helpful notes and pictures! The back-story: I had a dream in which I was icing a bubble tea cake. It turns out that no one has publicly documented online a bubble tea cake before, so I made one!

This is the brand of tapioca pearl that I use; it's $1.98 in Chinatown. It's an instant-cook brand because I have had a bad experience with the one you have to cook for hours. Each bag contains about 2 cups. I used the cheapest available (read: low quality, in this case) Pu-erh tea. I think that black tea would have been the best; Pu-erh  tea has a nice smell and a slightly burnt taste, in my opinion. However, I drank a lot of black/green tea during school, and I wanted a change.

INGREDIENTS for ONE 9-inch (23 cm) diameter round pan of cake 2-3 cm in height

6 tbsp tea leaves (I used loose Pu-erh tea leaves, although traditional bubble tea uses black tea. You can use whatever you like)
4 cups of water

1 large egg
1/4 cup of brown sugar + 1 tbsp
1/2 cup white sugar +/- some to suit your taste
1 tsp oil (use peanut oil if you want a peanut flavour)

1.5 c all-purpose flour (I used 1.25 c white flour and 0.25 c wheat germ. You can also use 1 c white flour and 0.5 c whole wheat flour)

0.5 tsp baking soda

2 tbsp vinegar (I used balsamic because that's all I had, but any vinegar should work)

1 dry cup of instant pearl milk tea (bubble tea) tapioca pearls
1 cup confectioner's (powdered) sugar

Bubble tea straw

METHOD (<1.5 hours total working calmly)

0. A few hours before you start the cake, heat up 4 cups of water and your tea leaves (without sugar). Keep this on a small simmer until the tea is way beyond the desired strength. After cooling, pour out 180 ml (3/4 cup). Leave the rest of the tea in the pot. You may need to use more or fewer than 6 tbsp of tea leaves, depending on the type of tea and your preferred strength.

A. Cake Batter!

1. Mix sugars, egg, oil, and tea in a giant bowl. It will look extremely ugly.
2. Mix flour(s) and baking soda in another bowl.
3. Pour 1/4 of the liquid stuff into the dry mixture and mix until there are no more lumps, using figure 8s. Add another 1/4, mix, and another 1/4, mix, then the last 1/4 and mix until smooth. You will have a batter that is a bit thicker than pancake batter. Leave this batter alone while you prepare the tapioca pearls. The batter does not taste great when raw.

2. Tapioca Addition & Cake Batter!
4. Remove loose tea leaves from the pot, and pour tapioca pearls and one tbsp of brown sugar into the leftover tea. Turn on the heat to high. Cover for around 3-5 minutes, until all the pearls have risen to the top and taste good. 

5. Then, turn off the heat and fish out the pearls(I used a tea strainer). Fold them into the batter, trying not to get too much extra tea into the batter. You should stir the batter after putting in a spoonful of tapioca, because the tapioca is hot, and we don't want cooked chunks of egg in our cake.
6. Grease your baking dish using a butter wrapper from your stash in the freezer!

7. Quickly fold the vinegar into the batter. You will hear a small hissing noise due to the vinegar reacting with the baking soda. When the vinegar is evenly incorporated, pour the cake mixture into your pan.

 (note the bubbles -->)

8. Bake in an unpreheated oven for 20 minutes at 350 degrees F on the middle shelf. Then, stick a fork into the cake, and if it comes out clean, it's cooked! The cake does not rise significantly.

9. Place hot cake onto a cutting board. Alternatively, you can wait until the cake has cooled by cooling it on a metal cooling rack. The cake should be super spongy and springy.

10. On the cutting board, place the rim of a glass jar on the cake and cut out a hexagon around the jar using a really sharp knife. Cut with all your strength, as the tapioca pearls are really sticky! Cut four of these hexagons (yes, it's possible!).


11. Trim each hexagon into a circle. Preferably, each circle gets a tiny bit smaller (to emulate a bubble tea cup).
3. Cake Assembly version I
11. In a mug, mix 3 tbsp tea with 1 c of confectioner's sugar to make a tea glaze. If you want a LESS runny glaze, use 2 tbsp tea. I used 3 tbsp.

12. Place the circular cakes on top of each other on a pretty plate, starting with the smallest. Spoon glaze between each layer (yes, it drips!).

13. Glaze the top of the cake, then stick your bubble tea straw through all four layers so that your cake won't topple over.

14. Eat by grabbing off chunks by hand! Drink leftover tea! The cake must be consumed within 4 hours. If left longer, the tapioca balls will dry out, as do most tapioca products not submerged in liquid. 


4. Cake Assembly version II
11. Fill a (bubble tea) cup 1/2 of the way with bubble tea cake chunks (leftover from Assembly I or just... in general).
12. Add tea, sugar, and milk in whatever ratio you want. You should add the milk first if the tea is still hot/warm and you're using a plastic container.
13. Drink "bubble tea cake"-flavoured bubble tea (using straw to suck up the tapioca and cake)!



5. Pudding Cake
If you want a more moist cake, you can add 240 mL (1 cup) of tea, instead of 180 ml. You follow the instructions as before, and you still bake it for 20 minutes at 350 F, middle rack. However, as this cake is really moist, you should NOT upturn it onto a cooling rack or cutting board. You can NOT assemble it to look like a bubble tea cake. Use a non-metal spatula to cut it into wedges and serve with icing or green tea ice cream.


Other Notes
1. Click Here for notes about ingredients/taste!
2. 0.5 tsp baking soda was definitely enough; the cake doesn't really rise, but it is still crumby and relatively light. There isn't much fat in it either!
3. The cake I made today was a bit to moist and pudding-like because I put too much tea into the batter.
4. The tea has to be REALLY strong; I used stronger tea this time, but you couldn't really taste it. Perhaps it's just the type of Pu-erh I got (the cheapest one)...
Maybe the Rickshaw brand (green metallic packaging) of black tea would've fared better. It sure tastes better.
5. Of course, other options include using coffee, hot chocolate, coconut juice, or other teas. One could probably even use taro powder, or green tea powder.
6. My friends liked it!
7. To see my first version (i.e. inception of bubble tea cake in this world)  with more bubble-tea-container pictures, click here.


Smile! :)

Bubble Tea Cake!

In the evening of the 19th day of the 6th month of the 2012 year since the flying spaghetti monster was born, PIE-314 invented bubble tea cake.

Tea flavoured cake with tapioca pearls. In my previous blog post (Bubble Tea Cookies), I talked about WHY I put bubble tea bubbles (henceforth referred to as "tapioca pearls") in my baking. In short, I had a dream a bunch of days ago in which I was icing a bubble tea shaped cake, with vibrant orange icing. The tapioca pearls had been cooked into the cake. I made tapioca pearl cookies yesterday to see whether tapioca pearls could be baked, AND THEY CAN!

So, today, I made a spongy, chewy cake to match the texture of the tapioca pearls inside (actually, I made two by accident, since most of this was improvised). Excuse me for the imprecise measurements; as I am subletting in Philadelphia, I lack a lot of my kitchen tools.

UPDATE: I improved the recipe on the 24th of June, so go there for the recipe! I've crossed out the things that don't apply anymore here.

INGREDIENTS for ONE 9-inch (23 cm) diameter round pan of cake that is about 3 cm in height

2 tbsp tea leaves (I used loose Pu-erh tea leaves, although traditional bubble tea uses black tea. You can use whatever you like)

1 large egg
1/4 cup of brown sugar
1/2 to 2/3 cup white sugar +/- some to suit your taste
1 tbsp oil (optional)

1.5 c flour (I actually used 1.25 c white flour and 0.25 c wheat germ. You can also use 1 c white flour and 0.5 c whole wheat flour)

0.5 tsp baking soda

2 tbsp vinegar (I used balsamic because that's all I had, but any vinegar should work)

1 dry cup of instant pearl milk tea (bubble tea) tapioca pearls
1 cup confectioner's (powdered) sugar

Bubble tea straw

METHOD (~1.5 hours total working calmly)

0. A few hours before you start the cake, heat up about half a pot of water and your tea  leaves (without sugar). Keep this on a small boil until the tea is beyond the desired strength. Then, pour out 150 ml and let it cool. Leave the rest of the tea in the pot. (I messed this up today; it should take at least 10 minutes)

A. Cake Batter!

1. Mix sugars, egg, oil (optional), and tea in a giant bowl.
2. Mix flour(s) and baking soda in another bowl.
3. Add 1/3 of the liquid stuff into the dry mixture and mix until there are no more lumps, using figure 8s. Add another 1/3, mix, and then add the last 1/3 and mix until smooth. You will have a batter that is a bit thicker than pancake batter. Leave this batter alone while you prepare the tapioca pearls. The batter will not taste good uncooked.


2. Tapioca Addition & Cake Batter!
4. Remove loose tea leaves from the pot, and pour tapioca pearls and one tbsp of brown sugar into the leftover tea. Turn on the heat to high. Cover for around 3-5 minutes, until all the pearls have risen to the top and taste good. 

5. Then, turn off the heat and fish out the pearls(I used a tea strainer). Fold them into the batter, trying not to get too much extra tea into the batter.
6. Grease your baking dish using a butter wrapper from your stash in the freezer!
7. Quickly fold the vinegar into the batter. You will hear a small hissing noise due to the vinegar reacting with the baking soda. When the vinegar is evenly incorporated, pour the cake mixture into your pan.

8. Bake in an unpreheated oven for 20 minutes at 350 degrees F on the middle shelf. Stick a fork into the cake, and if it comes out clean, it's cooked!

9. Place hot cake onto a cutting board. Alternatively, you can wait until the cake has cooled by cooling it on a metal cooling rack.

10. On the cutting board, place the rim of a glass jar on the cake and cut out a hexagon around the jar using a knife. Cut with all your strength, as the tapioca pearls are really sticky! Cut four of these hexagons (yes, it's possible!).


11. Trim each hexagon into a circle. Preferably, each circle gets a tiny bit smaller (to emulate a bubble tea cup).


3. Cake Assembly version I
11. In a mug, mix 2 tbsp tea with 1 c of confectioner's sugar to make a tea glaze.
12. Place the circular cakes on top of each other on a pretty plate, starting with the smallest. Spoon glaze between each layer (yes, it drips!).

13. Glaze the top of the cake, then stick your bubble tea straw through all four layers so that your cake won't topple over.

14. Eat by grabbing off chunks by hand! Drink leftover tea! The cake must be consumed within a few hours. If left overnight, the tapioca balls will dry out, as do most tapioca products not submerged in liquid. (SP was hugging me while I took this photo; therefore, it is blurry)

4. Cake Assembly version II
11. Fill a (bubble tea) cup 3/4 of the way with bubble tea cake chunks (leftover from Assembly I or just... in general).
12. Add tea, sugar, and milk in whatever ratio you want. You should add the milk first if the tea is still hot.
13. Drink "bubble tea cake"-flavoured bubble tea (using straw to suck up the tapioca and cake)!

Possibly Helpful Notes:
The cake is unlike normal sponge cake, brownies, or normal bakery cake products. It is super chewy, EXTREMELY pliable (see image below - the cake bounces back to its original shape even after denting it with my spoon), gooey, and sort of gluten-y. It's a little like steamed cake, actually. Of course, you can substitute your own cake recipe for my recipe. However, the problem with using, say, a Victoria Sandwich cakewith tapioca pearls is that the pearls may sink to the bottom of the pan, and leave craters on the cake surface. Also, a bunch of butter cake recipes don't even need liquids. A muffin or quick-bread recipe may fare better.

I actually wanted to use 100% whole wheat flour for this recipe, but I was lugging some 10 pounds of food and drink back from Chinatown and Trader Joe's on one shoulder and one hand, and carrying an extra 5 pounds of flour for 30 minutes would've been quite unbearable. I don't know for sure scientifically, but I think that whole wheat flour would've made a thicker batter (more...fibre; more gelatinous? Cellulose maintains cell structure), and would've helped the tapioca pearls stay in the batter. I threw in some wheat germ for that and the sorta health reason. I am really glad that the pearls were well-distributed! Perhaps using 100% white flour would still render this result; I will try again once all this cake has been eaten. Note the dents in the bottom and tops, though.

I used way too much baking soda in my batter, and not enough sugar. Again, this was a "well-educated guess" recipe. I may actually just use 0.5 tsp of baking soda next time, and see whether I get the same amount of rise. However, to mask the baking soda taste (although SP can't taste it), you can just use Assembly method II and smother it with sugar, tea, and milk.

To obtain loose leaf tea, tapioca pearls, and bubble tea straws, go to Chinatown! :) I got my straw at Mayflower bakery after buying a delicious snowball (red bean paste inside rice mochi thing that has the texture of an Invisibility cloak, that promptly got squashed on the way back). I also didn't have much counter space. The green parts of the kitchen are all occupied areas. :(

I am extremely satisfied to be the first (at least, I think/hope I am) to document on the internet the incorporation of tapioca pearls into a baked cake.

Bubble Tea Cookies!

I know that this sounds really cheesy, but I had a dream in which I was making bubble tea cake. I remember considering the logistics of the cake - how would it stand? Where do the bubbles go? How much does it have to look like a container of bubble tea? Straw? Do the bubbles stay at the bottom or are they distributed evenly throughout the (tea) cake? I remember applying bright orange icing to a cake shaped like a bubble tea container in the dream; in fact, it looked like this, except it was standing vertically and lacked the bottom and top. The rest of the dream seemed to be slightly morose, but I don't remember. 

Note: Throughout this post, I will refer to these tapioca pearls/bubble tea bubbles as "tapioca pearls" for consistency.

It turns out that no one has yet BAKED a tapioca pearl cake (or at least, I REALLY hope no one has ever done it). So, it's a race against time: I need to bake tapioca pearls into some sort of attractive cake thing, and post it on here. It will be an original product. When some famous celebrity chef finally does it in the future, people will search for recipes. MINE WILL SHOW UP and I WILL BE KNOWN AS THE ONE WHO DID IT BEFORE IT WAS COOL.

But first, what happens when you bake tapioca pearls?  Do they shrivel up? Or, do they get hot and steamy? Swell up and go hard? Explode? Pop like cherries? (Okay, I'll stop the jokes...)

So, here's a pilot test!

First, I made some cookie dough. I made half a batch of this vegan recipe, but I substituted the baking powder and water with baking soda and balsamic vinegar. There are also no chocolate chips or marshmallows. I added the balsamic vinegar right before adding the tapioca pearls, because the vinegar reacts with the baking soda.

Rehydrating "5-minute" tapioca pearls! A few months ago, they were $1.68, but now they are $1.98 at the underground Chinese grocery store in Chinatown :(. Throughout the semester, I would do this by boiling water using the electric kettle, pouring this water into my loose tea leaves in a tea strainer, sugar, and pearls, and cover my mug with a lid. After stirring about every 3 minutes for 10 minutes or so, the pearls would be chewy and edible.

However, I think that the pearls taste much better and are plumper when heated in boiling sweet tea on the stove.

For heating these instant tapioca pearls, I used about 1/4 of a saucepan of water, a handful of tapioca pearls and a tablespoon of brown sugar. There wasn't any tea in this rehydration, but I did use the leftover sugar mixture for tea.

After the pearls were cooked, I fished them out with a tea strainer and plonked them into the cookie dough. Leaving them in hot water for too long renders the whole pearl to taste uniform and starchy (well, it happened once, and I do not want to risk it happening again). After a quick mix, I scooped out the dough and baked the cookies according to that recipe. The mixture was really crumbly (think sand-like), so what I did was scoop up a tablespoon, squeeze my hand against the spoon, and keep squeezing until a ball was formed. The dough was kind of spongy.

AND THEY WORKED! They harden as they cool, so I ended up with crispy (but delicious) cookies that were devoured by my friends and SP. SP ate 5/12ths of the batch (of 12 cookies). The cookie recipe produced cookies that remind me of the almond cookies, like these, I used to get for 2 HKD  in HK near my piano exam place.
The tapioca pearls were chewy, not dry, and delicious! So, I will make a cake next time!

On the 18th day of the 6th month of the 2012th year of our wholesome flying spaghetti monster, I, PIE-314, OFFICIALLY MADE THE FIRST TAPIOCA PEARL COOKIES. EVER.