Just Haze

Pumpkin Mousse Trifle

 

Last month, Michael and I were at the Epcot Centre at the perfect time -- the Food and Wine

Festival. Dishes from selected countries all around the world were at Epcot and we had the pleasure of sampling many of those dishes. One of the desserts that we loved the most was the Pumpkin Mousse Trifle.

 

Since Michael and I love mousse, I decided to make the dessert for Thanksgiving dinner. It's not the traditional pumpkin pie, but we didn't have a traditional whole turkey.... it was butterflied. The recipe was easy. Anyone can do it. For myself, I try not to make cakes from boxes, but this is one day that I had to make it from a box.

The recipe called for spice cake, but since this dessert was last minute, there were no spice cake mixes at the grocery when I picked up the last ingredients for the dessert. So, instead, I have to add some spices to yellow cake mix and some brown food colouring to make the cake mix look and taste like spiced cake.

I didn't have mouse cups and to serve the dessert, I arranged them in martini and margarita glasses.

 

 

French Macarons

When people hear the word macaroon, they immediately think of the coconut based cookie.  There are two different types of macaroon.  There is the American Macaroon which is coconut based cookie and of course, the French Macaron, which is almond based cookie.  

I made some French macarons today since I have been craving them for a couple of weeks now.  They were so easy to make and French macarons are versatile.  For the vanilla macarons, I filled a few of them with Nutella and a few in guava jam (a recipe I obtained in Hawai'i).

French Macaron filled with Guava Jam

French Macaron filled with Nutella

Hello Kitty Cake Pops

I finally have my niece for the weekend and since she loves to bake as much as I do, we decided to make some cake pops but we just didn't know what kind.  After much deliberation, we finally decided on our favourite character ... Hello Kitty.

The pops were very easy to make.  We took some Vanilla cake and shaped Hello Kitty's head with one of my fondant cutters and dipped the pops in white chocolate.  We didn't have as much of the decorative ingredients for Hello Kitty's red bow, so instead of red M&M minis, I used my rainbow chip sprinkles as the centre of the bow and painted Hello Kitty's face with white chocolate tinted with black food colouring.  

I actually turned out pretty good ... surprisingly.  Now she knows how to make cake pops and most especially her favourite character.  Next, if I can figure out how to make other Sanrio characters.

Baby Cakes Cake Pop Maker

I've been so used to making the classic cake pop.  When I heard about the Babycakes Cake Pop maker, I was skeptical.  "I bet this won't work.  Just another gadget to collect dust in the closet or pantry."  Yet, I still wanted to try it.  I purchased the gizmo at Chef Central in New York for $19.99. 

 

There are so many cupcake recipes that I want to try.  Of course, I have a plethora of cookbooks where I can try different cupcake recipes.  I was most afraid that the cupcakes would be dry and wanted to infuse them with homemade buttercream frosting, but I decided not to.  Let's just try the gadget out to see if it works. 

I decided on a chocolate orange cupcake recipe from one of my books.  I decided to cut the recipe in half  since the full recipe makes 1.5 dozen cupcakes, which means, that would be a lot of cake pops to dip in chocolate.  After deciding to cut the recipe in half, I took all of my ingredients out and hoped for the best.

The cake pop maker made the cake balls perfectly round, but I'm not sure about how moist the cake would be since in my experience, some cupcakes aren't as moist since there isn't a layer of frosting to keep the moisture in.  I still went ahead with the original recipe since this was the first time I was making the cakes in a cake pop maker.

The cakes turned out pretty good - shape wise.  I've heard some people who reviewed the product to be a waste of money and that their cakes aren't as round as what the product photographs showed.  I looked at mine and they are perfectly round!

The instructions on the Cake Pop maker said not to overfill the maker and only to fill it with one tablespoon of batter.  I did just that.  Also, in order to fill the little holes perfectly without any drips, I suggest that you put the batter in a pastry bag.  If you don't have a pastry bag, a ziplock bag would be just fine.  

Whilst the cakes are cooling, I began prepping my dipping chocolate over a double broiler.  I put the cake balls in the freezer as I melted my chocolate.  I was afraid at how the pops would handle on the sticks, but they handled pretty well.

I was a bit disappointed at how the chocolate orange cupcake recipe came out of the cake pops.  They were crumbly and not moist.  For sure, the cake pop maker cakes is not the same as the classic cake pops since the classic cake pops are ladened with frosting after crumbling a sheet cake into mere molecular crumbs.  Babycakes Cake Pop Maker makes the actual cake (which is a lot healthier) and not too sweet.  

I'm not dissatisfied with the product at all.  I just need to refine my recipes to add more moistness to the cake pop, which means, I have to make sure my batter is not heavy, use oil instead of butter, cook it a minute less, and even infuse it with buttercream frosting.  Hmmm.... maybe that's a project I can do today.  

I'm really excited to see what else I can do with this machine and it's a great way to experiment with different recipes without turning on the oven and making so much of a failed experiment throughout the year.  

 

Strawberry Cake Pops & Bites

After writing papers all day, I decided to bake some Valentine's Day desserts.  Baking for me is a stress reliever.  Last year, after coming home from a horrible day at work, wanting to ring out someone's head off, I got off my butt and baked!  Lo and behold, a super fudgy mint cupcake recipe was born.

I've made strawberry cakes before, but not strawberry cake pops.  For the cake, I took Food Network's Hummingbird Cake recipe and added two essential ingredients, pureed strawberries and strawberry extract.  This cake recipe was perfect all by its own and now I have to mush the cake to make the pops.

Instead of rolling the prepared cake pop batter into balls, I had a stroke of genius and took out my round and heart shaped fondant cutters.  It's Valentine's day after all and I needed a heart shaped cake pop.  As I'm shaping my batter, I went ahead and melted my dark chocolate candy coating on a double broiler.  I love using the Ghirardelli Melting chocolate better than Wilton's.  Ghirardelli has a smoother and richer taste and when it dries, it dries somewhat into this hard yet smooth chocolate.  In another double broiler, I started to melt the pink Wilton Candy melts.  I'm not really a big fan of Wilton's candy melts since it doesn't melt as well as Ghirardelli and that I had to add so a lot of vegetable shortening or paramount crystals which add more calories and fat to the chocolate.

Once the chocolates were melted, I went and dipped the pops, half of them in the dark chocolate and half of them in the pink vanilla.  I have eaten three of these already... the ones that didn't make the cut.

Some of the irregulars, I took them to work and gave it to two of my co-workers.  One of them ate two of the irregulars.  I've decided to give him the irregulars since the last time I made some cake pops, he ate his wife's share.  This time, I wanted to make sure she got some instead of his husband eating all of it.  Which by the way, he almost did.  For the whole day, I have to constantly check to see if he's even left one pop for her.  Whew!  He did!

 

 

Baked Goods

Last month, I was on a baking spree.... well, when have I not been on a baking spree?  Baking always calms me down whenever I'm stressed out.  Last month, I've been so stressed that I made goodies to pass out to Gruff's (aka Michael) employees.  I made chocolate drizzled macaroons, shortbread cookies, peppermint star cookies (my own recipe) and brownie bites (my own recipe).

It's really funny when Gruff took these to work.  He had to ration them since his employees are pretty much .... well ... um ... serious eaters.  I laughed my arse off as he put certain ones and a certain number of them in different containers.  He wasn't about to bring all of them to work!  It's one tupperware at a time!  

I also made some chocolate peppermint cupcakes (my own recipe again) with homemade buttercream frosting topped with star candies.  It was a bit disastrous when it came to the star toppings.  Note to clients:  to store cupcake, store in an open container as candy stars melt.  Despite the deco on top being disastrous, Gruff liked them.  Actually, he likes all the desserts that I bake.

Poi Bowl at the Ala Moana Shopping Center

You might think it won’t be good since it’s in the food court at a shopping center.  But the Poi Bowl and the rest of the restaurants at the Ala Moana Shopping Mall beg to differ.  After all, we are talking about the Ala Moana Shopping Center! 

Michael and I were in search of local food and since we now stayed at the other side of Waikiki (the Hilton Hawaiian Village), the closest thing to local food was at the Ala Moana Shopping Center.   Instead of picking eating Saimin, we came across Poi Bowl at the Food Court of the mall.  It was local food. 

Of course, I ordered my usual, LOCO MOCO.  If you don’t know what a Loco Moco is, it’s two beef patties served over rice with an over-easy egg and gravy on top. 

I’ve always been skeptical of who makes my Loco Moco.  I’ve been visiting the Islands for over ten years now and da kine Loco Moco is from the Da Kitchen in Maui.  They make the best Loco Moco and I ate my weight in Loco Moco a couple of months ago!

The Poi Bowl’s Loco Moco tastes good as well.  Michael ordered the Tripe, Lau Lau Pork, Rice, and Potato-Macaroni Salad.  For dessert, he ordered us Haupi, a coconut jello dessert.  There was so much food packed into our little plates and it was a bit amazing on how we finished it all.   

I’m not much of a tripe eater except when it’s cooked in Mexican Menudo, but this tripe dish was great with white rice.  The Lau Lau pork was amazing as well.  I definitely recommend this place!

Little Village Noodle House - Oahu Chinatown

After touring the most familiar place, Aloha Bowl, Michael and I along with two of our friends decided to hit Chinatown.  Lunch was around the corner so we decided to take a look around Chinatown.  I was going to suggest a little hole in the wall restuarant, but they decided to eat at the Little Village Noodle House because it had rave reviews on one of the books they've read.  I was skeptical.  Just looking at the restaurant doesn't give the "authentic" Chinese food vibe, but I was hungry so Michael and I just went along with it.

The place wasn't authentic Chinese food.  The food was okay and it was expensive.  I had the Singapore Noodle Bowl and it was dry as could be.  It had some good flavour, but not something I would order again if I returned to Oahu in the near future.  I would have rather eaten at a hole the wall where you see a lot of the locals instead of the touristy place.  I go where the locals go and for an Asian resturant, I go where the Chinese go, not where the Caucasians go.  The Little Village Noodle House is just like Panda Express, only way more expensive.  I don't suggest it at all!

 

Loco Moco Drive-Inn

After a great day at Hanauma Bay Nature Preserve snorkeling, Michael and I with two of our friends hit our next stop... LUNCH!  It was all about local food and we ended up finding Loco Moco Drive Inn which is about 10 minutes away from the Preserve.

The food was excellent!  I wasn't at all hungry and given that Michael and I are going to Ruth's Chris later that evening for a work event, I ordered crab and cheese wontons with some Fruit Punch.  Michael ordered the Ox Tail Stew.  The food was marvelous and given the many locals that frequented the store, I was most pleased!

Their crab and cheese wontons were fried crispy to perfection, it had enough crab and cheese in it.  It wasn't at all just cheese and no crab.  I didn't taste Michael's Ox Tail Stew, but from what I hear from his "mmmm," that it was good.

 

New Barbecue Sauce

For the last few years after tasting Michael’s co-worker’s chipotle barbecue sauce, I’ve been trying to experiment on a barbecue sauce.  I love chipotle peppers, but, I’m not quite thrilled with the chipotle in my sauce.  I wanted my sauce to be sweet and spicy at the same time.  

After searching for sweet and spicy barbecue recipes on the internet, I’ve began conducting experiments with the ingredients in my kitchen.  I was amazed at how it turned out.  It starts out sweet and the heat slowly creeps up on you.  To pass the test, I served the sauce at a golf tournament Michael and I catered and it was a hit!  Maybe I should start bottling this up and selling it….