Does making it at home mean its healthier? Or am I fooling myself?

Back to the scones! I've decided thats my default thing to bake... why? Because I can make them. It seems that other things that I bake seem to... well fail. Its not like I'm clueless, i KNOW why it happens I just continue to do the same thing over and over again. I'm not a baker. Not yet anyways. I'll just keep trying, but I'm telling you, scones... I can do scones. This time I decided to do a glaze, mmm confectioners sugar. So I proceeded on my merry way to make raspberry scones with lemon glaze. Delicious. Oh! I forgot to say that I used a new recipe then normal and this one had no eggs in it. I was hesitant to follow the directions, because baking without eggs seemed... wrong in some way. But I resisted the urge to not follow the directions per usual, because when I deter from the normal directions thats when my baking goes.... wrong.

Raspberry Scones with Lemon Glaze

For scones:

• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 tablespoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 2 tablespoons sugar
• 5 tablespoons unsalted butter, cold, cut in chunks
• 1 cup heavy cream, plus more for brushing the scones
• 1 cup fresh raspberries

For lemon glaze:

• 1/2 cup freshly squeezed lemon juice
• 2 cups confectioners' sugar, sifted
• 1 lemon, zest finely grated
• 1 tablespoon unsalted butter
  

My girlfriend loves fried chicken... and man So do I. But I've been trying to move away from fried things (at least until I get back into my gym routine). So I decided we would try and bake the chicken with some delicious panko crumbs on it. Lets just say it didnt taste as good as when its friend.. but we still ate it all. What does that tell you?

Baked Panko Chicken

Finally I've documented a burger creation that I've been making for awhile and it always is a winner in my book. I love hamburgers, cheeseburgers, bacon cheeseburgers all of the above so I decided to make delightful twist on a cheese burger.

Gorganzola Cheeseburger with Caramelized Onions

I forgot how long it takes to caramelize onions. But it was totally worth it.

So I decided to make some brownies from scratch something I've never done before, and since my best friend Deirdre who is a baker didnt answer her phone... I had to find a recipe on my own and of course they turned out dry and gross. Thanks for not picking up the phone Deirdre, the cost was the lives of innocent brownies. ANYWAYS, to try and save the brownies I decided to make a caramel sauce from scratch... but since the brownies were such a fail I was only left with caramel sauce so.... I made caramel apples.

Homemade Caramel Sauce on Apples

Homework? Who has time for that.

Talapia, Sauces, and the Ice Cream Adventures.

This week has been a really busy for me, I had a huge exam, a literature review due and an anti smoking campaign to work on. It was really stressful, and I cooked a lot to let myself relax as much as possible. I've had a couple recipes I've been needing to try out, and some that I found to work with what I had in the house. I recently bought some Taplapia because it was on sale for $3.99 a pound... so What to do with a pound of Talaplia? Well other then make some healthy quick meals, they are deliciously compatible with lots of things. I found this delicious recipe that works with the Panko crumbs I had left over and a sauce that seemed easy enough and worked for me, since I've been trying to cook with Tomatoes recently. So I started on the sauce and it seemed to be going better then the others I have made so far, it was a cream based sauce, delicious and easy. Just olive oil, garlic, Cherry tomatoes, cream and Parmesan. The recipe told me to wait until the sauce turned pink... it never turned pink but it did turn orange. I figured it was done at that point so I started in on the Talapia. Now I froze all the fillets together and... I couldn't just defrost one, I had to do them all, so I made more food then I needed. The talapia recipe wanted me to bread them with parmesian, but i opted out. Cooked them in olive oil!

Panko Talapia with a Parmesian Tomato Cream Sauce


Delicious Sauce

Recipe for sauce:
1 Tablespoon Olive Oil
2 Cloves garlic minced
10-12 Cherry Tomatoes
1/2 Cup cream
1 Cup Spinach
1/4 Cup Parmesan Cheese

I wanted to bake something earlier on in the week, but I had no chocolate chips, so I decided I would put candy in them! What candy do you ask? Why Japanese chocolate mushroom candy (no real mushrooms involved) of course. So I made some cookie batter, didn't have enough flour for them (which didnt go well first time around so I had to add some whole wheat flour in later on) and chopped up some candies. They turned out chewy and crunchy.

Japanese Mushroom Candy Cookies

Tasty mushrooms..

I used to go to High school in Berkeley and it was right by this food place that was called the Gourmet Ghetto, and there was one pasta place called Gypsies I always used to go to. I used to eat this Gorgonzola Penne pasta all the time and I really enjoyed it, and the sauce seemed simple enough so I figured i could try it on my own. I found a simple Gorgonzola sauce recipe and tried it out, added some tomatoes, spinach and chicken to spice it up a bit. This was my first cheese sauce I made on the stove that didnt get grainy, gotta use those low burners man. The dish was easy enough to make and fed all of my roomies.

Gorgonzola Pasta with Spinach, Chicken and Tomatoes


Dreamy sauce...

Recipe:
1 Cup white wine
1 1/4 Cups Heavy Cream
5 oz Gorgonzola Cheese
Pinch of Black pepper

I stumbled recently upon a recipe for making ice cream, that explained to me how to make it without an ice cream maker. Now I'm hoping to get an ice cream maker for Christmas, and I really have wanted to make ice cream, so when I found this recipe, I was delighted. Obviously I was avoiding homework as usual, and so this seemed like a great choice. I started out making this recipe for Chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream and it seemed easy enough, but of course i screwed up the first step. I burned the butter and used all my half and half on the burnt batch... what was I to do? Then i remembered I had some cream and some normal milk, so I just evaporated the milk (the trustee technique I learned when making curried salmon) and added it to the cream and restarted with some new, not burned butter. I then whisked it together with sugar and egg whites (I later reread the recipe and it required egg yolks not whites.. FAIL) till it was nice and fluffy. The heated it up till it was scolding and transferred it to the fridge to cool. After it was cook I put it in a cake pan and shoved it in the freezer. Every 20 mins I churned so the frozen sides would mix in. Eventually after a couple hours once it was a bit more solid i added in a lot of chocolate chips and let it freeze overnight. It turned out really good, not as creamy as I wanted but thats alright, it tastes just like cookie dough.

Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Ice Cream


Freezing process...

Recipe:
1 Cup Chopped Chocolate chips

2/3 cup dark brown sugar

4 large egg yolks (I used whites)

2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract

2 cups half and half (I used evaporated milk plus some heavy cream)

2 cups whole milk (I used 2%)

3 tablespoons unsalted butter

pinch of salt