Turkey Meatballs

I don't eat turkey but I baked turkey meatballs. According to my brother, they were amazing (the best food I've made this August, apparently). They looked moist and flavourful too.

Unfortunately, I forgot to use metric.

Ingredients for 54 small turkey meatballs.

About 3 cups ground turkey

1 cup grated parmesan cheese

2 cups bread crumbs

0.5 cup (fat-free) milk (120 ml)

1 small onion

1 egg

1 tbsp oil

A few fresh basil leaves

Parsley flakes

Oregano

Lots of garlic cloves

Salt

Pepper

Method

1. Chop up stuff and mix everything

2. Clump into 54 balls, each about the size of a gumball. Since I'm so used to having baked items spread out, I left space between each meatball. I guess it wasn't that necessary and that I could've squished everything on to one baking sheet.

3. Bake at 375 degrees F for 10 minutes.

4. Take out, turn meatballs upside down.

5. Bake at 350 degrees F for 10 minutes.

6. Let sit in oven if you want, or just serve.

I'm sure I can do the same thing with firm tofu or chickpeas.

Baked Polenta!!!!!

I decided to bake my last tube of polenta.

Oh! How I lament not baking slices of polenta in my past!

It was absolutely delicious! Crispy (not really crunchy) outer poofy skin, soft and gooey center...

I'm still pondering how that happens, actually. What causes a poofy skin to form on a uniform corn mixture? Why is the surface of the polenta all crispy, enrobing a poof of air and soft, creamy (but still hot) polenta filling? It's like gruyeres. Cheese puffs.

In terms of physics, I know that when the temperature increases, volume increases. Therefore, when you stick polenta in the oven, the pockets of air within the polenta, which get closed off by the crispy surface of the polenta, expand. The expansion causes the poofiness. However, I don't understand what causes the surface of the polenta to stick to form a crisp. I initially thought, hm, gluten. But, gluten isn't present in polenta, is it? In corn? so what causes the surfaces to stick? Water? Water soluble proteins forming a matrix? The Maillard reaction? Of course, the outside is exposed to a higher temperature, meaning that it has a higher chance of burning. I suppose this means that there is less moisture on the surface of the polenta. Because the temperature is so high (425 deg. F), there isn't enough time for the water within the polenta to diffuse down its concentration gradient to distribute itself to the surface of the polenta. With a low temperature, the polenta would cook more evenly. With high temperatures, the outside is crispy, and the inside is moist (not as cooked). I could be wrong, but this is what I've gathered from science. I suppose it would be cooler to be a food scientist rather than a molecular biologist.

It's very delicious... Next time I ought to make thinner slices (though, these were already hard to slice). 425 F for 15 minutes on one side, 15 minutes on the other. Bottom rack. It's like a chip... but not really. No oil, either. Just slice polenta from a tube (I know, I should make polenta from scratch.) Delicious!

Baked Acorn Squash and Seeds

Despite it being something like 38-9 degrees C today, I was determined to finish the acorn squash in my fridge. Right now, all that's in my fridge is about one serving of Colby-Jack cheese, a pound and a half of carrots, one tomato, cherry cough drops, and those disgusting candy sticks from a while ago. I need to clear out my fridge by the 28th so that it can defrost properly. I also have two cans of beans, a tube of polenta, and some amount of oat bran left.

I wanted to make acorn squash and chips but after not being able to slice the chunks thinly enough, I figured, eh, I'll just bake them. Bake them without oil or seasonings at 400 degrees F for some 15-or-something minutes.

I also toasted/baked the acorn squash seeds, and they smelled phenomenal! They smelled like... popcorn.

They tasted like... popcorn. Slightly. I loved it!

I actually also love baked acorn squash! It's deliciously sweet (but not too sweet) and has a potato-y texture! The acorn squash skin also smells and tastes like nori. What an interesting plant... popcorn, nori, and a delicious sweet interior...

The "baked" carrots, however, were still half raw when I ate them. They were a little sweeter than usual, but it wasn't too much to talk about.

Corn Tortillas!

I love corn tortillas, but I rarely see them for sale. It's always fried corn tortillas in the form of chips or crunchy taco shells. When I saw soft corn tortillas at Trader Joe's for $1.49, I squealed! Yay! I can eat these plain... or with anything, really. I've got to try them with peanut butter one day... but in the meantime, I baked some crunchy tortilla toast (a.k.a. salt-free tortilla chips).

All I did was fold the tortillas (the crease causes a break), stick them on a cookie tray, and stick it in the oven at 400 F, and I checked every 5 minutes or so to see if they looked crunchy/curled up. No oil, because I don't have any.

So corny! Nicely textured...Haha

Eggplant Sandwich!!!

In terms off eggplant, I am definitely not an egghead. Sure, I've helped my parents flip eggplant on the BBQ grill, and I often eat Chinese stir fries with eggplant. I've just never truly cooked eggplant before. Or baked it. Or boiled it. I'm not really sure how to cook eggplant without usurping it of its nutrients, or adding a lot of oil (like my mum does when we have stir fries).

I don't want to make eggplant stir fry mainly because the eggplant from Chinatown looks so darn fresh (though it's definitely not "organic" in any sense of the word! I can tell they sprayed it with ethylene gas, because the surfaces underneath the leaves are still white). I also don't have any oil. I know, this sounds really stupid; oil/butter/other fats are a staple in a kitchen, especially when cooking, but I'm someone going to survive these two months without them (I think). One week down.

These are "cylindrical" eggplants...not the "teardrop-shaped" ones.

Apparently, eggplant can be eaten raw, although it may be bitter. I tried a chunk before I baked these, and they weren't bitter at all; they were actually kind of sweet and spongy, with a bit of moisture. I prefer them cooked, though.

After doing some research and reading a recipe, I figured that I should just slice my eggplant, salt the slices (yeah, I have a lot of salt, pepper, garlic powder, and Italian Pizza Seasoning, but no oil.), rinse the slices, and stick them on a cookie sheet for 20 minutes at 375F... and just see what happens.

I learned a few things:

1. I feel very self-conscious when I prepare and cook food in front of strangers. I felt very shy cutting eggplant while another girl in the apartment was waiting for her mac and cheese to bake.

2. Eggplant should be sliced at an angle, not cut like cucumbers.

3. Salting and rinsing sounds easy, but actually is really annoying because you use a ton of paper towels. After using three segments for four slices of eggplant, I decided to just stick everything on the cookie sheet and just bake it and see what happens. I should've added some pepper, but oh well.

The methodology for neophytes like me is this:

1. Do not peel eggplants. Evenly slice eggplants at an angle. Unfortunately, my slices ranged from 1 cm to 3 cm.

2. Pour some salt/pepper on your hand/plate, dip both sides of the eggplant flesh into it, and place the slice of eggplant on the cookie sheet. You do not need aluminium foil.

3. Repeat.

4. Bake at 350F (the oven was preheated due to the mac and cheese) on the bottom rack for 10-20 minutes. Since there is no baking soda/powder in this recipe, you can open the oven a lot to prod the eggplants.

5. Poke eggplant with a fork to see if is squishy and gooey yet (If it still looks white, it's not really done, but it's edible).

6. Turn off oven and let sit for however long you want, if you want something more sludgy.

7. Stick in sandwiches!!

Notice that there is NO OIL INVOLVED.

So I made a spinach, cheese and eggplant with herbs sandwich, which I stuck on the sandwich grill/press that we have in the apartment. It's a really efficient non-stick grill. It's amazing!!!

Victoria Sandwich Cake

I decided to tackle the Victoria sandwich cake again. This time was NOT going to be a half-baked attempt to recreate something that I knew worked 7 years ago. This time, however, I creamed the sugar and butter first, and I used bleached flour. The result? The second-best Victoria sandwich cake, ever! [The best one was the first one I made, because it was less burnt and more jammy].

Ingredients

150 g caster/granulated sugar

150 g unsalted butter

150 g self-raising white flour

1 tsp baking powder

3 eggs

JAM OF CHOICE!

Powdered sugar!

Method

1. Cream sugar and butter. This takes a long time, but it is extremely worth it. I suppose softened butter would be easier to cream, but I'm guessing the butter I used was around 18 degrees C.

2. Add 3 eggs and mix. You will get a lumpy mixture. The original recipe called for the use of an electric whisk, but I don't have one. I don't have many sleek kitchen utensils... so I just mix. Please, Victoria sandwich cakes were invented wayyyyy before electric whisks were [Victoria = Queen Victoria, right?]

Yes. Lumpy.

3. Add in flour one tablespoon at a time. By the last three tablespoons, you will have a really thick batter. The batter should ALMOST be cookie-dough-dense batter. The batter will have little lumps.

4. Separate batter into two pans. The whole point of the Victoria sandwich cake is its sandwich-ness. It is perfect for females to make for males, as it is a sandwich, but offers all the cakey goodness that men crave [ JUST KIDDING!].

5. Anyway, bake at 355 degrees F [or, 180 degrees C, as the original recipe says] for:

8 inch/20cm pans: 25 minutes [says the original recipe] on...the middle rack

9.5 inch pans [the pans I used]: no more than 20 minutes!! on the lowest rack

For me, I used the lowest rack and after I baked the cakes for 20 minutes, I let them sit in the oven for another 20 minutes. When I took them out, one was perfect and the other was a tad burnt. Ah well. Next time I'm putting them in for 15 minutes and letting them sit for 30 minutes.

6. Spread with jam. Warm jam is more easily spread, but cold jam is good too. Then, SANDWICH!

Victoria sandwich cakes are usually thicker, and the recipe I had was meant for 20 cm pans. So, my Victoria sandwich cake was rather thin. However, the taste, texture, and smell were not lost! It was rich, crumbly [big big big big big crumbs!], buttery, crusty on the circumference but spongy in the center, pure, fresh, and mouth-watering. It was not vanilla-y, small-spongy-holes, artificial, super-sweet, or like any of those yellow cake mixes at the store.

You will NOT find a cake like this in a box or frozen in a tin in a store in the U.S. You won't even find this in the bakery section! It doesn't taste moist like Boston cream pies-cakes, and it doesn't taste at all monotone like those *ahem* various "just add half a cup of oil and 3 eggs and mix and bake!" cake mixes. Victoria sandwich cakes are delicate, flavourful, and clean-tasting. One interesting aspect of it is that when you first bite into it, the cake doesn't feel that great; it's dry and crumbly [but not crunchy]. However, as you chew, you feel a bit of "juice" flow out of each thick crumb. Yes, this "juice" is sugary butter. How succulent.

The powdered sugar isn't necessary, but it adds a nice touch to the sandwich cake. Notice that the sandwich cake is not "yellow" or "white" or one uniform colour; it is composed of beautiful shades of caramel; it demonstrates elegance and hard work. Yes, I'm being dramatic, but this cake was definitely the most meaningful cake I've ever made [I'm... bad at making cakes...]

My sister started taking chunks out of it from 11am to 1pm. I told her to just take a slice already! She loved it.

SHE LOVED IT.

This is going to be her birthday cake! It's going to be better than last year's! It's going to be eight layers tall! [Maybe?]

Victoria sandwich cakes are also really photogenic in sunlight. Look at these pictures! No flash! Perfect!

Chocolate Chip Cake-Cookie Puffs!

I thought that it was a good idea to make a Victoria Sandwich cake. I weighed the sugar and butter and flour according to a recipe that I used around 7 years ago in Food Tech class, and I started mixing...

And then I realised that this was NOT going to work out because

1. The "batter" was the consistency of cookie dough.

2. The butter was globby.

3. The "batter" was brown, not yellowy-creamy-white, because I had used whole wheat flour instead of bleached flour.

4. I didn't have an electric whisk.

I'm not really sure why the batter worked out right 7 years ago, but completely failed when I tried to make it again. The method said to add the butter into the flour and sugar, rather than cream the butter and sugar first, which is what I'd usually expect to do.

So I added 3/4 cups of milk and then realised that the globby, pungent butter [Okay, the butter wasn't pungent, but I've decided that I don't like the smell of butter by itself. It needs to be creamed with sugar to smell good] was not going to somehow melt and homogenise into the mixture. I did not take a picture of it because it was terribly ugly.

So I added another 250 grams of flour... and make chocolate chip cake-cookie puffs!

It doesn't look like the dough is airy and not-dense, but it actually is. When you poke it, it should feels soft, and a hole should be easily made.

[Note the usage of my pie pan from "Santa"!!]

They aren't that sweet, which is good.

Ingredients for 45 cookie puffs:

1. 400g 100% whole wheat flour, or basically enough to make a dough that you can mould into balls with your hands - just keep adding flour by the tablespoon

2. 150g butter [about 1.5 sticks]

3. 3/4 cup milk

4. 3 eggs

5. 170g sugar

6. vanilla and chocolate chips, however much you want!

7. 1 tbsp baking soda

8. 1 tsp baking powder

9. Numbers 7. and 8. aren't that well tested out. Straight after baking, I could taste the baking soda, but after letting the cookies sit for two days, the taste of the baking soda is... gone...

Method:

1. [Don't do what I did, and mix the flour with the the butter...] Cream butter with sugar, and add eggs and vanilla. Add milk.

2. Add flour by the tablespoon.

3. Use hands to roll a dough. The dough SHOULD NOT STICK to the hands. Sift dough if you feel like it.

4. Add baking soda and baking powder.

5. The dough should be light, airy, NOT DENSELY PACKED, gooey, and feel plasticky.

6. Add however many chocolate chips you want.

7. Make balls the size of meatballs, maybe with a 3cm diameter.

8. Bake [see below]

I baked two batches. The first one was on the middle rack at 350 degrees F for 15 minutes.

The second batch was on the bottom rack at 360 degrees F for 6 minutes, and then left in the oven for ~10 minutes.

They should be done when a fork stuck inside the centre of the cookie comes out clean. They will appear soft when taken out of the oven, but they harden.

Both batches turned out basically the same...The cookies do not spread in the oven. In other words, you can make them into any shape you'd like.

The image above includes both the first batch and the second batch... and they look the same. They also taste the same; cakey, airy, dry-ish, not bland, textured [due to the whole wheat flour] and not too sweet. They don't taste greasy or rich or saturated with chocolate chips. Actually, maybe they're more muffin-y than cakey. You decide.

My mother likes them. She thinks that they look like meatballs! They are quite 3D, due to the baking powder and baking soda, of course. These can totally be cakes...except that they don't require a cake pan or paper baking cups.

So, how are my baking skills? I can turn a failed cake recipe into a cookie recipe... I guess that shows that I'm not a complete neophyte, right?

And now to actually make a Victoria sandwich cake...

What?! Cheesecake?!

Yes! Cheesecake! With tofu! The recipe is at the bottom of this post! [I haven't posted a recipe in a LONG time... a whole semester, right?]

I had a problem. I wanted to make cheesecake because BV likes cheesecake. However, I have never used sour cream or heavy cream or whipped cream or dairy products like that in my cooking before, so... I felt scared using them. Okay, I've used whipped cream before, but that was at least 5 or 6 years ago, and that was whipped cream used as... whipped cream.

On the other hand, I squeezed a piece of tofu. [haha. weak joke...]...I mean, on the other hand, I know very well how tofu works. I can make food with tofu.

BV hates tofu but I used it anyway...

The first cheesecake turned out tasting like tofu, because I had used approximately 20 ounces of tofu in it... along with some cranberry juice, because, why not? I also threw in some corn starch to keep it from falling apart, although I'm not sure whether it's necessary.

It looks like cheesecake, right?

Or, it looks like stained bacteria cultures...

I personally like frozen cheesecake, and I think this is due to the fact that the first few times we bought cheesecake in HK [33HKD for a plain Sara Lee cheesecake - that's what I remember], we never followed the "leave cheesecake at room temperature for 20 minutes before eating" instruction. Honestly, frozen cheesecake, with the hard, ice-blockish texture, tastes better than creamy, room temperature cheesecake.

I used Grape-Nuts for the crust, because ever since I found out that every graham cracker at Shoprite has PHO, I've decided to dislike them [yes, I'm biased!! But so are you!]. Maybe Trader Joe's has nicer graham crackers?

I've also decided to dislike Keebler because everything they make [that I know of] is grossly full of HFCS and/or PHO.

So, in my second batch, I gave some leftover batter to my sister who ended up decorating them with candy and sprinkles. It is utterly overkill.

This is the cheesecake I gave BV. I probably shouldn't've told him that there was tofu in it... but I guess he couldn't taste it [except for the "weird texture"] because he didn't say that it tasted tofu-y.

This is the 3rd cheesecake [from the second batch] that I gave to JM, and I decorated it using the leftover icing sugar from the cookies.

Recipe for cheesecake!!!!

Filling:

1. 8 oz cream cheese, cut into chunks [one package. GET FULL-FAT. DON'T GET LOW FAT!!! This isn't because full-fat cream cheese is healthy or anything; it's just because I'm not sure how fat-free cream cheese melts/reacts with my other ingredients...so I suppose you could get fat-free cream cheese if you want.]

2. 10 oz squeezed firm tofu [or 20 oz if you want the tofu taste to be prevalent. By "squeezed", I mean, try get rid of as much of the water as possible. I did this by literally squeezing the tofu, which incidentally mashed the tofu so it was easier to blend.]

3. Blueberry, or 2 tbsp cocoa powder, or whatever flavouring.

4. At least half a cup of orange juice. [Or lemon juice. An acidic juice. The orange juice actually left a tiny bit of orangey taste... although that could've just been my imagination]

5. Around 4 tsp of corn starch [add more if you feel like it. I'm not quite sure how much I had, since I initially had 2 tsp, then during the blending, I added more.

6. 1 cup of confectioner's sugar! [YES!! More if you feel like it.]

Healthy Crust!

1. 2 cups of Grape-Nuts

2. Honey or sugar water [However much you want; if you want a crunchy-tooth-breaking crust, don't use that much water, but if you want a soft crust, add more water until it looks damp!]

Stuff to do!

1. Pulse and shake cereal and sugar/honey/water mixture until you get fine pieces.

2. Press into a 11-inch pan if you want the crust to just fill the bottom. Alternatively, press into a 9-inch pan if you want crust on the sides. I used a 7.5-inch pan and had a lot of crust leftover [hence the mini cheesecakes that my sister studded with sprinkles...]

3. Bake at 350F for 5 minutes. You do NOT need to preheat your oven. That is a waste of heat.

4. Stick everything in the Filling list in a blender, and blend! After a few minutes on Low, you should have something that is uniformly blended and has the consistency of American pudding. If not, make it more pudding-ish, by adding corn starch and/or orange juice. I know "consistency of American pudding" is really hard to define, but it shouldn't be like cookie dough. It also shouldn't be like cake batter. It's more... elegant and poofy than those. Actually, it's sort of gelatinous.

5. Taste it. If it tastes good, cool. If it doesn't taste sour enough, add more orange juice!

6. Pour onto crust and smooth it out.

7. Stick that cheesecake into the oven at 350F for 25 minutes. Leave it in there for another 25 minutes; why not? Use up the remaining heat!!

8. In the meantime, eat the cheesecake filling remaining in the blender. No eggs! No 90% fat! Yay!

9. Take cheesecake out, and let it cool. There really shouldn't be any browning...a tiny bit on the edges is okay, though.

10. When cheesecake is COLD COLD COLD, put it in the fridge/freezer/outside - whatever you prefer.

11. In 12 hours, take out the cheesecake and wipe off the condensation at the top, using a paper towel. Do not use a tissue. I'm not sure why the cheesecakes condensed... I think it's due to the tofu, actually, or perhaps the blueberries [high water content!]. Either way, although it makes the cheesecakes look a bit weird, it's just water after all.

12. These cheesecakes taste good for at least 3-4 days. In the freezer, they last much longer [well...duh.]

13. The cheesecake is actually relatively healthy...

National Apple Day?

Apparently, the 4th of November was National Apple Harvest Day...

I don't believe it is. I just think that commons had a surplus of apples. Either way, everyone literally clamoured to grab chunks of baked apple goods... It was sickening [and I was part of it]. I overheard one of the workers remarking that the consumers were piling their plates with these apple-y goods so fast that they had to keep bringing new pies and cakes out. Again, consumerism demonstrates our inherently greedy personality. I didn't try the apple crumble cake or the pie. I also just mooched off TJ for some apple muffin and doughnut [she didn't finish them, anyway]. In the end, all I actually got for myself was a mini cake, some fritter and a coffeecake.

The coffeecake was extremely moist.

Crumble that I didn't eat.

Amazing AMAZING moist apple cake... with very few chunks of actual apple. The icing was amazingly gooey. I was not aware that this sort of viscous-ness existed. However, on the apple scale I'd give it a mere 20%...

The muffin was just a standard muffin, with an apple-ness of maybe 7%. I only have this picture because the reflection on the table is really pretty. I've never realised how reflective the table is...

Apple cake. Appleness? 40%. The chunks of apple are actually visible and the top was nicely crusted with cinnamony-appleness.

Contrast that to the fritter..

Tasteless doughnut...apple cider doughnut, perhaps, but an apple rating of zero %.

The fritter has an apple rating of 1%. It was fried dough. Coated with sugar icing. There were a few cubes of apple, but this reminds me of the time when I was 6 [or 10?], and my parents' friend bought my brother and I a cake with whipped cream sandwiched inside. After unsandwiching the layers, however, all I found was a thin outline of whipped cream on the perimeter of the bottom cake layer. Hm.