Sweet Thangs

*mini red velvet

Did you know there is a little bakery called Sweet Things that resides in Cal Mart, a grocery store located next to the 24 hour Starbucks on Spruce & California? Surprised me too. Angel and I were on a hunt to mack on some cupcakes and according to Yelp, Sweet Things deserves to be macked on. Took us a while before we noticed it was INSIDE a grocery store, and did not have their own store front. I got myself a few mini red velvets which were ONLY $1.10 each! Cheaps! The regular sizes were about $2.50 which is also pretty cheap. They also had an assortment of various other desserts but I stopped by solely for the cupcakes. I would go back to try out the other flavors they offered. And the cheesecake. Cause I love me some cheesecake.

If only they opened late, that'd be awesome. We frequent that Starbucks for late night coffee fixes. Okay, we go there cause it's the only place with a bathroom opened at 2am. But I do get something, sometimes. LOL. Cupcakes and coffee mmmmmmmmmmmmm. Cravings are most satisfying at night.

If All The Snowflakes..

WERE CANDY BARS AND MILKSHAKES, OH WHAT A

SNOW THAT WOULD BE.

I picked up some holiday funfetti at Target, some fondant, food coloring spray (YES, SPRAY!), icing gel from Michael's and went to town on this for a few hours. My hand is still hurting from drawing all those snowflakes. But huzzah! Worth the labor, I hope ;)

My first time using fondant, not TOOOOO bad I guess. Haha. I definitely need to work on my technique a little more. They make it look so easy on tv!

Turkey Dance

My turkey that I made for Thanksgiving turned out quite nicely I'm glad to say. Unfortunately I didn't get a picture of the whole turkey but do accept a picture of my mother carving it, and one of it nicely sliced and placed on the plate:

It was a hit in that all the kids are like OMG A TURKEY FOR THANKSGIVING LIKE REAL THANKSGIVING WHUTTTTT so they liked it. But the parents were just meh  and didn't care for it. It was pretty good I must say. Better than my turkey last year. I also made pretty effing delicious mashed potatos which the kids also enjoyed. Basically the two Americanized dishes were made by me. The rest of the dishes that we had were of Chinese cuisine and made by the parents. LOL. Never changes.

Unfortunately I didn't get to bring any home so...no moist maker sandwich for me this year :(

Tofurkey

Just kidding.  I don't know how to make tofurkey. But I am interested in trying it sometime.

Tomorrow is like..the day of reckoning. At this point in my culinary entity, my Everest. It's a small turkey but with great expectations.

It's going to be awesome. And delicious. And epic. But not so epic that I'm expected to make the turkey every single year from tomorrow on.

I hope there's some left over so I can use it for a Moist Maker Sandwich!

Christmas Cupcakes

When I find the time, I wanna make some Christmas themed cupcakes. I still need to find a store that sells fondant. I'm not sure if I wanna bother attempting to make it from scratch lol.

My Burnt Qwesadeela.

My burnt cheese quesadilla D;. But seeing it was my first time ever making a quesadilla, it was still pretty tasty hahaha.

Sprinkles Cupcakes

*Located in Stanford Shopping Center

After months and months of talking about it, Jane and I finally made the trip to Palo Alto to see what the buzz is all about. I've heard from many accounts that the cupcakes are insanely delicious and worth the trip. Palo Alto is about a 30 minute drive from the city as it is. And there is usually a LONG LINE just to get your hands on some of the cupcakes. So at times, such a trip loses its appeal lol. Anyhow finally made the trip down there. The line was relatively short around 1 when we got there. But didn't really want to carry a box of cupcakes around to go shopping, so we decided to get it at the end when we were leaving. Went back around 4 and there was a line OUTSIDE the store. Luckily we only waited 10 minutes because by the time we were done, the line was even longer than when we were in it. Let me also tell you that these cupcakes are NOT cheap eats. Each cupcake is $3.25 . Box of 4 is $13 Half a Dozen is $19 A Dozen is $36. Yeah....I was originally gonna get half a dozen but I didn't feel like spending $20 on cupcakes after spending $400 at Bloomingdales. But that's a different story. I just got a box of 4 instead:

2 Red Velvets
1 Strawberry (proceeds go to a charity fighting breast cancer!)
1 Vanilla Milk Chocolate (vanilla cake with chocolate icing)

If you're like me with a sweetness limit, this isn't for you. It's REALLY REALLY sweet. I could only eat one per seating because it was so sweet. I like sweetness if it's balanced out by something else but it's a different story when it's all purely sweetness. The first couple bites were good but then it got to be too much. Red Velvet is my favorite regardless. Mainly because I love red velvet lol. But don't let my opinion stop you from trying it yourself. People who adore such sweetness love this place. Plus it puts the buzz to rest and I can get over it haha.

Would I recommend it? Sure why not. They're good cupcakes. Would I go back there? I would. But I wouldn't make the trip deliberately for the cupcakes. Maybe if I was in the neighborhood I'd stop by.

Torched

Janice got me flambee torch! Now I just have to find the time as well as those ceramic cups for the creme brulee. Very very exciting, I've always wanted to try to make creme brulee. It looks hella cool LOL.

I Want To Go To There - Ike's Place

3506 16th St
(between Sanchez St & Prosper St)
San Francisco, CA 94114
Yelp Listing

So I heard they have crazy good sandwiches? But the lines are even crazier? I haven't had a redonkulously good sandiwch evarrr so I'm hoping they're going to rock my sandwich loving socks. Just gotta defeat the lazies hard enough to make the trip out there. Lately I don't like going anywhere that doesn't have free parking LOL. I'll try one of these days.

Start Of Something BOSSome?

My cousin asked me to make her two dozen of those redvelvet cupcakes and said she'll pay me for the services.

I said no to the money of course.

But for the first time ever, I heard the words "You should start a business since you like this so much." come out of my mother's mouth.

I'm still in shock.

Quick Update.

I made a new header for the blog I neglect. LOL. Yeah. I promise to update this thing a lot more from now on.

Cookies and Cream Truffles

As I mentioned in the last post, I found a recipe for Cookies and Cream Truffles in Cosmo (where I also get my monthly dose of relationship advice and sex tips that I will never use but still entertaining to read) . Anyway, I did a couple things a little differently because I'm lazy and I take the easy way out (which always turn out to be the more complicated way, but I digress...)

Ingredients/Materials:

16 Oreo Cookies

8 oz. Cream Cheese

2 cup Semi-Sweet Chocolate Chips

Powdered Sugar, for decorative dusting

Wax Baking sheet

Large plate or pan

1. Line the plate/pan with the baking sheet.

2. Place cookies in a food processor. (I don't know how to put mine together, so I just used a blender)

4. Add cream cheese, mix with the cookie crumbs.

5. Scoop the mixture (with a spoon or your fingers) into small balls.

6. Cover with plastic and freeze until firm, approx. 1 hour.

7. Microwave the chocolate chips until melted, approx 1 min, stir, heat for another 30 seconds, stir.

8. Dip the cookie balls into the chocolate using a toothpick or small fork. Place them back onto the baking sheet.

9. Dust with the powdered sugar.

And there you go. Please note that chocolate chips tastes basically like dark chocolate, so if you're not a fan of dark chocolate, I suggest you melt a Hershey's bar or something else milk chocolate. Which I am going to dip the rest of the balls with. Ha. Until then!

Hybrid Theory

http://kogibbq.com/

Some of their popular taco items:

Korean Short Ribs

Tofu

LOOK AT ALL THAT DELICIOUSNESS. I just read about them in Newsweek and I just thought the concept was amazing. Korean/Mexican hybrid food IN A TRUCK?! Doesn't that alone tease your palette? And the awesome part is that it roams with no specific location, so if you find it, you are seriously one of the luckiest people in LA. Now they're on twitter where they twitter the location they'll be at for the night. And it's so awesome, it's definitely a cult following. It reminds me of Nick And Norah's Infinite Playlist where they spend the night looking for this underground (super, duper underground) band called "Where's Fluffy?". The premise is that they have secret shows but don't release any information about the details. Only the die hard fans will figure out the clues that the band releases throughout the night to lead them to the real deal. And yeah. That's what it reminded me of. I'm dying to try it now. Just LOOK AT IT! I may just have to stalk them if and when I go to LA. HAhaha. The bummer part is that since it's so popular, people end up waiting in line for almost an hour or more just to get a taste. And apparently it is worth the wait. It it just that good. Plus, we know how much I love Korean BBQ. And definitely my fair share of Mexican cuisine. So this is all win-win for me!

P.S. I found a recipe for chocolate truffles in the April 2009 Cosmo that I'm going to try. We'll see how it goes!

Cupcaking

So I haven't cooked or baked anything in a long time. Obviously. LOL. I finally found the energy and time to bake some cupcakes, just because I was craving cake. I was originally going to bake some red velvet cupcakes but I couldn't find red velvet cake mix anywhere! WTF?! And then I was too lazy to make it from scratch so I just got chocolate cake mix and dyed it red, cause that's pretty much what red velvet is. Red chocolate cake. LOL.

Chocolate cupcake with Cream Cheese Frosting with Ghiradelli Chocolate Shavings (handshaven)

I got the frosting recipe from here. My go-to site when I'm looking for something specific. It was really easy to make, took maybe 10 minutes? Maybe less? It wasn't as sweet as I'd like so I added a little more sugar than the recipe suggests. The cream cheese was very fragrant but the whipping cream definitely softened everything up. I can't wait to try it again, with actual red velvet this time :).

My fascination with red-velvet cupcakes started when I saw an episode of Throwdown with Bobby Flay on the Food Network. The recipe was from this bakery/restaurant called Auntie Em's down in LA. It looked freaking delicious, and inevitably one of my stops when I go down there in a couple months. Luckily they put the recipe up on their site. Click. I'll try again when I have time.