Every time I visit California, I cook for my family, and I bring something to the holiday potluck that invariably happens. This year was no different.
Ingredient Challenge Dinner Party Three
Saturday, June 11, 2016 – Of all the Ingredient Challenges, there was still one I hadn’t made: salmon with kimchi. It was suggested to me by my coworker Eric S. So I had to do one last dinner party to finish up the series.
December 2015: Cooking In California
It might be more accurate to call this Cooking For California, since the story starts in Seattle, as I try out a few new recipes and practice a few old ones.
Specifically, one of my friends specifically requested deep-fried stuffed jalapeno for our traditional New Years Eve party. (Which she calls “jalapeno poppers”, and I lovingly misinterpreted as “jalapeno popplers“.
Not only that, but it’s tradition for my to cook dinner for my family every time I visit, a tradition that was broken once only because… well, you know… And between my Chef Watson stuff and my Ingredient Challenges, I had a lot of new material I wanted to try on real people. (I ended up going with some Chef Watson winners for my family dinner.)
Cookie Crust Pumpkin Pie 2: The Pumpkining
Hey humans! So you know how last year, I made a pumpkin pie with a no-bake filling in a cookie crust? Well, I tweaked the recipe a bit, added more sugar (because it wasn’t sweet enough), reduced the cloves (because it was too clove-y), and overall tweaked the recipes. And I also discovered that they do sell butter-flavored shortening in tub form, although you might have to check larger safeways, possibly maybe even Whole Foods. And butter-flavored shortening prolly made a big difference this time.
And I like what I got (and so did my Thanksgiving cohorts), so I figured I’d share the recipe with you this time.
Holiday Family Dinner 2014 (And More!)
Monday, December 29, 2014 – It’s a tradition now. Twice a year, every year, when I visit my family in California, I cook them dinner.
No-Bake Pumpkin Pie with a Cookie Crust
(Photo courtesy of Joy.)
Thursday, November 27, 2014 – It’s Thanksgiving. My friends know I bake epic-level desserts. They also know I have a knack for cookies. So of course, I revive the cookie crust pie. Except instead of a chocolate filling, I go for a pumpkin pie filling.
(Side note: cookie crusts were relatively obscure when I started making them in 2012. Now they’re pretty common. It kinda annoys me. I guess I’m a food hipster.)
Peanut Butter Cookies
Monday, October 13, 2014 – I’ve made a lot of chocolate chip cookies in my lifetime. (Well, mostly in the last 6 years.) But I’ve never made peanut butter cookies before. But then my friend [redacted] asked me to bake peanut butter cookies for her birthday. So I thought, what the heck, why not?
Adventures With Browned Butter
Sunday, September 14, 2014 – When I first started learning how to bake, I learned that you should never melt the butter, that if you’re using butter, the creaming method is king.
Since then, a few of my coworkers and a few of my friends have mentioned melting the butter. One of my friends even mentioned browned butter. (Nope, it’s just brown sugar.) Serious Eats famous cookie article (the one that I’ve been linked to by 4 different people) swears by browned butter. So I decided to finally give it a try.
Extra Large Cookies and the Bake Sale
Tuesday, March 25, 2014 – The Charity Bake Sale, Spring 2014 Edition just ended. This year, we had 28 volunteer bakers, 16 volunteer sellers, 4 Varzea volunteers, and 1 poster designer. We raised a grand total of $2190, beating our previous record of $2158. The proceeds are being split between Seattle Humane Society and Seattle Children’s Hospital.
Side-By-Side Cookie Photo
Tuesday, January 14, 2014 – This is one of those rare moments where I have cookies from two batches side by side. I baked cookies on Sunday to bring to work. And then when I baked more cookies on Tuesday for Sizzleworks graduation, I still had leftover cookies from Sunday’s batch. So I took a side-by-side photo to compare.
The cookies in the bag are from Sunday’s batch, where I substituted 100g milk instead of 2 eggs. The cookies on the napkin are a Tuesday’s batch, hybrid recipe where I used 1 egg and 1 Tbsp milk. It’s hard to tell in the photo, but the hybrid recipe cookies are slightly larger with browner edges. (Otherwise, they look almost identical, as you can see in the photo.) As it turns out, counter-intuitively, the less egg or milk (what I call “moisture”) you put in a cookie, the less it holds together, and the more the edges spread out and burn.
So how did the cookies themselves come out? As it turns out, you can definitely swap out eggs for milk in a cookie, as long as it’s at least 100g milk (roughly half a cup). And hybrid recipes of 1 egg and 1 Tbsp milk help you make nice, dense, chewy cookies but still have fine-grain control over the moisture content, so you don’t end up with unworkable dough. But more on that in my upcoming book.