Potato Cake/Bread

With sundry scrumptious potatoes, what better thing to bake than potato cake/bread?! Banana bread and pumpkin bread exist; surely potato bread (NO, NOT THE LOAF/SLICE VERSION AT THE STORE) is the next best thing ever? Carbs on carbs? I found a banana bread recipe and used it as the basis for my potato bread/cake. My sister says that it looks more like a brownie than a bread (true, because it doesn't really rise), but it has banana-bread-like crumbs, and is very moist, so I would be inclined to say that it's a muffin... even though it's not muffin shaped.

The best part? Everyone in the family, INCLUDING MY SISTER, eats it. My sister, the most fastidious person in the house when it comes to food (she has to have her dinner arranged EXACTLY, has to eat certain foods with a FORK ONLY, won't eat in the presence of the smell of mustard etc.) eats potato cake/bread. Whoo!!!

Below are two versions; the normal version, and the lower Calorie version. The lower Calorie version... surprising tastes the same and has a similar texture to the higher Calorie version!! Wonderful! I've made four of these breads/cakes so far, so I've had time to experiment and make adjustments.

INGREDIENTS for a 3 cm tall x 20 cm square pan of cake (1200 cm^3)

120 g butter

30 g brown sugar

40 g white sugar (more if you want something sweeter)

300 g freshly mashed potato

0.75 tsp baking soda

cinnamon

1 tsp nutmeg

vanilla

pinch of salt

40 ml water from the pot you used to boil potatoes

1 tbsp vinegar (optional but highly recommended)

100 g whole wheat flour

100 g nuts, chocolate, dried fruit etc. HIGHLY OPTIONAL.

METHOD

1. Boil water and potatoes. Mash potatoes with baking soda, cinnamon, nutmeg, vanilla, and salt. Keep hot water in pot.

2. Cream sugars with butter. The result is a soothing, creamy, beige substance.If you feel like it, throw in an egg BUT IT IS NOT NECESSARY, and DO NOT ADD WATER in STEP 3.

3. Mix creamed butter with mashed potato, water, and vinegar. Note that the butter melts.

4. Fold in 25 g flour. Do this 4 times. You should have a rather light, gooey batter the consistency of pudding. Throw in OPTIONAL nuts/chocolate etc.

5. Spread evenly into a baking dish (greased with the butter wrapper).

6. Bake on the bottom shelf of an un-preheated oven at 177 degrees F/350 degrees F for 22-25 minutes.

7. Let bread/cake sit in oven for an hour or two or whenever you think it looks cooked.

8. Eat, or freeze it for later.

ALTERNATIVE METHOD if you are running low on time

1. Mix everything in a bowl. It will look ugly and lumpy. Just keep mixing. It will get much smoother.

2. Bake on the bottom shelf of an un-preheated oven at 177 degrees/350 degrees for 25-28 minutes.

3. Stick a fork into the bread/cake and if it comes out clean, it's done.

Because I'm kind of upset with the celerity of butter consumption due to this recipe (120 g of butter within 2 hours...), especially for my mum, I tried to make a lower calorie version that would still neatly crumble, stay moist, and be bready/cakey-textured. It looks the same:

INGREDIENTS FOR THE LOWER CALORIE VERSION (20 cm square pan)

60 g butter

20 g brown sugar

6 sachets of artificial sweetener

300 g freshly mashed potato

0.75 tsp baking soda

cinnamon

1 tsp nutmeg

vanilla

pinch of salt

120 ml water from the pot you used to boil potatoes

1 tbsp vinegar

100 g whole wheat flour

100 g nuts/chocolate/etc. (OPTIONAL)

METHOD

1. Boil water and potatoes. Mash potatoes with baking soda, cinnamon, nutmeg, vanilla, and salt. Keep hot water in pot.

2. Cream sugar and artificial sweetener with butter. The result is a soothing, creamy, beige substance.

3. Mix creamed butter with mashed potato, water, and vinegar. This will look ugly.

4. Fold in 50 g flour. Fold in another 50 g flour. You should have a rather light, gooey batter the consistency of pudding. Throw in OPTIONAL nuts/chocolate etc.

5. Spread evenly into a baking dish (greased with the butter wrapper).

6. Bake on the bottom shelf of an un-preheated oven at 177 degrees F/350 degrees F for 22-25 minutes.

7. Let bread/cake sit in oven for an hour or two or whenever you think it looks cooked.

8. Eat, or freeze it for later.

Again, the lower Calorie version tastes the same as the higher Calorie version, although it looks uglier when you're mixing the ingredients together. Both have similar textures; if you get something that's more gooey than crummy (so, more like coconut pudding than like a cake), you should bake it for a few more minutes.

I made a coconut version, which wasn't as tasty as the plain version, surprisingly (too chunky). The walnut/pumpkin seed version was pretty good, though, and I enjoy encountering chunks of potato, so my next potato recipe will most likely be something sweet with huge chunks of potato.

I know that my opinion doesn't count for this, but the potato bread/cake looks, tastes and feels like banana bread. I think it's the nutmeg, vanilla, and potato texture that sort of... give off a banana-y aura. Neither my mum nor my brother agree with me. Maybe I'm just going bananas. (haha!)

Candy Reviews

New candy samples to review! This begs the question of whether I should review candy that I've already tried in the past or not (because that brings up a ton (literally) of candy to review)...

Necco Mint Julep

This smelled like 100% toothpaste. It tasted nothing of the sort, though! It was very chewy and juicy (I know, strange diction, but it's the best adjective for it), and didn't have too strong a mint taste, so by the time I had finished consuming it, my mouth wasn't minty at all. I am most pleased with the juiciness.

Necco Banana Split

This one did not have any smells. It also only tasted mildly of banana, but at least it wasn't such an artificial banana flavour. Again, extremely juicy.

Goetze's Original Caramel Cream

Before I divulge into the ingredient/advertising aspect, I'd like to say that this tasted half amazing! The cream part tasted... cold (surprising), but wasn't so special. The caramel part, however, tasted like bread. It was textured nothing like bread, being super gooey and chewy, but it tasted just like bread! It was that not-sweet-blandy-breaddy-wholesome taste, so I enjoyed that very much. However, what gets to me is that Goetze's advertises itself as all original and using ingredients from way back when, and being healthyish for candy. Now, I'm pretty sure 60 or 70 years ago, HFCS and PHO were not used in candy! How is this "Original"? However, the ingredient "wheat flour" probably explains the delicious bready taste.

Goetze's Chocolate Caramel Cream

So, the chocolate flavour wasn't as great as the caramel one, since it was just a milder/maltier chocolate version of the bread-caramel flavoured one. I'm not sure whether I'm ever going to buy these again, because of the ingredients (a matter of principle, I guess), but I'm pretty sure I can emulate something like this in my kitchen...when I get home.

Brach's Jelly Nougat

The jelly was such a disappointment; you couldn't distinguish it from the nougat and it was basically hard chopped up jelly bean. The nougat was also sort of a disappointment because it tasted much too sweet, and not milky enough.

Brach's Neapolitan Coconut Sundae

Chewy, with a distinct not-really-coconut flavour. No chocolate/vanilla/straberry flavours, though :(

Food Injustice

UPDATE: So, I apparently got 3rd place out of 40 photos. The photo that got 3rd place is the one with the plastic spoon, knife and fork, the broken coffee cup, and the piece of bread - the third picture. 3rd place means I don't get any prizes but I get my photo displayed on college green on Wednesday from 11-3 I think... so check it out :)

The Civic House at Penn with Moral Voices had a photo competition about food injustice. I tried not to waste any food in the making of these photos... [mostly wasted spinach and lettuce...:(]

As a side note, I wonder why there was a "Dinner for Hunger Awareness" via Unicef at Penn. Why host a buffet dinner to kids who are able to obtain food? Sure, each person is paying for this dinner, but why not pay to experience fufu or Plumpy'nut? Then, the people to whom the money is going [excluding the amount that goes to Unicef workers and advertising...] will get to experience the buffet dinner so ubiquitous in our lives [instead of just obtaining more fufu or something]

Omelettes...

It looks like the letter Y. As in, "Why?"

Yeah, they're supposed to be mismatched...

Pure injustice right there. Why is a segment of fruit so much more expensive than a pastry? What if the world sold and bought food based on caloric value? Implications... would be ridiculous.

Salad leaves...

Oh the puns. It's such a mouldy cliche metaphor...

It just so happens I obtained an apple [that I was ACTUALLY going to eat...] with a hole in it from a worm or insect or bacteria or something...

Chelo's

Thursday the 22nd of July: Chelo's for dinner. Though we were driving from Weymouth MA to Seekonk MA, the GPS told us to drive through RI... so we did, and on the outskirts, we happened across this restaurant, at which we had a great dinner. I don't understand why NJ and NY have all these toll roads, whereas we someone managed to avoid tolls everywhere else...

"Stuffies" appears to be a RI concept. We didn't get it; not my loss though since it's apparently this giant stuffed clam. My brother should've ordered it though; he was sort of regretting it. Eh, next time.

Warm bread rolls.

My dad got some French cow pie thing, which I believe is another RI dish. According to my brother, it was dry and too "meaty", because he was comparing it with the famous Australian Meat Pie. The mashed potato was really nice, though, and the CORN WAS AMAZING.

My grandpa got steak. He attained his goal of being able to live the "American Dream", which, for him, means consuming some steak with vegetables and mashed potato. This stuff, if done authentically in China [which I kind of doubt], is really expensive. Here, though, it's an average meal.

My mum got some seafood pasta, ate a few bites, and left the rest for the next day because she "wasn't hungry". This is why I DON'T order when we go out to eat. My mum barely ever gets through half of her meal... my sister never finishes her kids meal... my brother finishes about 50% of the time...

My brother got a "bananaberry salad", wherein the banana pieces are actually fried banana chips. They were with a balsamic dressing and a balsamic strawberry dressing. I don't like balsamic dressing. I like to use balsamic vinegar as an ingredient for jam and baked items, because it's just used to accent the flavour of everything else, but I honestly dislike the taste of balsamic vinegar itself. But not too deeply... I can tolerate most foods. Except liquorice. Anyway, I digress.

My curly fry swan!

TAPIOCA!

I love tapioca.

Yes, tapioca is used in bubble tea [a.k.a. pearl milk tea], which SVC introduced to me a few years ago and I was thinking "Hmm. What is so interesting about THAT?".

How wrong I was.

Tapioca Pudding is also the name of a character from the Peanuts series by Charles Schulz. I don't think I can truthfully say that I've had tapioca pudding before... though I HAVE had extra-gooey creamy tapioca, which I suppose could constitute as a sort of pudding. Anyway, my mum decided to cook this mini tapioca we had sitting in a shelf, and apparently, this kind disintegrates really easily. The orbs were mushy. However, after adding some soy milk, the globular mass started separating from each other... and I actually ended up with something that appeared to look like tapioca! Yay! [Earlier on it was a clear jelly mass, like a bowl of steaming gelatin pieces, or hair gel]. Personally I like it with a lot of blueberries :) although the mug with banana wasn't too bad. I didn't add sugar to either mugful, though, but I think that's just my preference.

MP's Grad Party

The Food. Was. Awesome! Well, who am I to judge? The food anywhere, at any party, is usually way more creative than the banal [Though, I eat a lot of bananas at home. And, bananas are NOT banal. Haha. Another silly joke! I'm going bananas!] stuff I eat every day at home for dinner. Though, today's snacks were truly original compared to the past few parties which I attended. Most of it was from my favourite supermarket/civil-exploration place - Trader Joe's! Anyway... awesome pasta sauce!
From left to right: tortilla chips, dried pineapple [simply the best thing there], seasoned crackers, TJ's cheese crackers [A.K.A. "better than Ritz" Ritz-Bitz], carrots, peanut butter crackers, [A.K.A. "better than Ritz" Ritz-Bitz. Did I mention that I used to love the peanut butter and/or cheese flavoured of these? Yeah, in HK these, along with the "Garden animal crackers" were my favourite. Oh, and the chicken [?] flavoured crackers.], sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds, spicy chipotle salsa [great!]
Close-up.
Pasta with alfredo sauce, pasta with tomato sauce, and vegetables with butter and bread crumbs. I felt like there was potato in the vegetables... but maybe it was just me. Either way, the vegetables were really nice :)
Salad with onions and ranch dressing. I don't really have a thing for ranch dressing, but I like onions so that was good.
Bad resolution of crunchy oatmeal raisin cookies. They were approximately 2 cm in diameter... and although I could taste the oatmeal, I could neither taste nor see any raisins. Hm. Didn't make sense, but they were really delicious, so I ate a lot of them. Actually, I'm usually more into soft cookies, but these were quite interesting. Reminded me of ginger snaps, even though they didn't have any ginger in them, of course.
My first ever cookie cake [I think]! The icing was icky, in my opinion, but I'm not really into consuming icing. Icing is great to look at, but not really to chug down. The cookie itself was really soft [Some propylene glycol? HFCS? I didn't check...]. and the chocolate chips actually tasted like chocolate chips!
My first eggplant and ricotta pizza ever! The ricotta cheese was pretty amazing; usually I just have it in lasagne, but the creaminess added a really interesting texture to the pizza. The eggplant wasn't that great, though, and I think I prefer plain eggplant parm. Or just grilled eggplant. I found the crust rather sweet, which is kinda weird considering this is a savoury product [Not a candy pizza. Those are... eh...], and it was also really dry. Not flaky dry, but BLAND dry. Maybe I was just really thirsty at the time...

I will update about the chocolate tomorrow.