That's How We Roll

Sushi Par-tay at j-wong's:

initial spread:

avocado and tapenade finger sushi:

spam musabi (technically Hawaiian, but I'd never had it so I wanted to try it):

carrots and lemon zest inari sushi (brought by j&k):

smoked salmon sushi rice balls:

unagi finger sushi:

Finally, the raw fish!  The first of many, MANY, rolls (I stopped photographing at this point):

For dessert, mochi ice cream, Asian cheesecake and butter mochi:

I ate WAY too much this weekend.

Pecan-Raisin Drop Cookies

While searching for a simple non-chocolate cookie to make, I found these. I never would have put these two  together and I honestly wasn't sure how good they would turn out.  They have a 100% "would make again" and 4-star rating, but I was still skeptical.

They are great!  They are slightly buttery and light with crunchy bits of pecans and plump raisins.  The kosher salt doesn't get lost in the cookies either and waves "Hey, taste me!" in certain bites.  Some of the reviewers complained that their cookies were flat, but I made the recipe as written and mine looked just like the picture.

I doubled the recipe, because I was going to take 1 batch to work and 1 batch for camping.  I thought for sure 100 cookies would be enough.  The recipe makes SMALL cookies.  I was making mine bite-size and using rounded teaspoons of dough as instructed.  The cookies are about 1.5 - 2" in diameter.  Despite this, I still only got about 78 cookies out of a double batch.  Definitely could have made more!

Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Banana Bread

We had a few very ripe and slightly bruised bananas left over from last weekend's camping trip. Neither of us is a fan of eating mushy bananas so I decided to bake with them. I decided to try something different and I don't know how I never thought of this before... Take a couple of my favorite things and bake them all together.

The great thing about this recipe is that neither the chocolate, peanut butter nor bananas have a dominate taste in the bread. There is a good mix of each of them and the bread is moist. It also makes 2 loaves so you can freeze one and eat one.

Makes 2 Loaves

~ 12 slices per loaf

~185 calories per slice

2 1/2 cups flour

1/2 cup sugar

1/2 cup packed brown sugar

1 tbsp baking powder

3/4 tsp salt

1/4 tsp cinnamon

3 bananas, mashed

1 cup milk (I used soy milk and you can't taste the difference.)

3/4 cup peanut butter

1 tsp vanilla

1 egg

1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips (I might try dark chocolate next time.)

1) Stir together flour, sugars, baking powder, salt and cinnamon in a large bowl. Put aside.

2) Beat together bananas, milk, peanut butter, vanilla and egg. Mix in dry ingredients. Stir in chocolate chips.

3) Pour batter into 2 greased loaf pans. The batter will be about 1/2 a pan but the bread will almost double in size when baking.

4) Bake at 350 degrees for 50 minutes or until done.

Apple Blackberry Cake / Bread

Last week I was going through some papers and found a recipe I cut out from a Martha Stewart magazine. It was for an Apple Blackberry Cake / Bread. The picture looked delicious! Even though we planned on camping for the weekend, I decided to make the cake/bread... I assumed whatever didn't get eaten during the week, we'd just bring along with us... I assumed wrong... Nothing was left. I made this cake/bread on Tuesday and it was eaten by Friday morning from just the two of us. It was a big hit in the kitchen and something I'd make again. The recipe was sugar quick and easy.

Granulated sugar, for pan
1 1/2 cups flour
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
6 tbsp butter, melted
2 tbsp butter cut into pieces (for topping)
3/4 cup packed light brown sugar
2 tbsp packed light brown sugar (for topping)
1/2 cup milk
2 eggs
4 apples, peeled, cored, and cut into wedges (I used granny smith apple because they're my favorite)
1 cup blackberries
1/4 tsp cinnamon

1. Butter a 9" springform pan and dust with granulated sugar.
2. Whisk together flour, baking powder, and salt in a bowl.
3. Whisk together melted butter, 3/4 cup brown sugar, milk and eggs in a separate bowl. Whisk flour mixture into wet ingredient bowl.
4. Spread batter evenly into prepared plan. Arrange apple wedges over batter and sprinkle with blackberries. Gently press fruit into batter.
5. Combine remaining 2 tbsp brown sugar, cinnamon and remaining 2 tbsp butter into a bowl. Cut into pieces and sprinkle over fruit.
6. Bake at 375 degrees for about 24-50 min or util cake tester is clean.

Cadbury Creme Eggs Benedict

I saw this on Serious Eats and had to make it. It is completely gross yet terribly funny. I originally planned on making it for April Fools Day but as you can see, it's April 18th so we'll just say I made it for April Fools Month.

The instructions are detailed on Serious Eats and I made only slight modifications:

• I didn't have a pound cake and wasn't going to buy one just for this purpose but I did have very thick slices of a sweet white bread. I fried that in the frying pan and sprinkled a mix of cinnamon and sugar on it.
• I used cream cheese frosting instead of buttercream because it's what I had leftover from a recent cake I made. Cream cheese frosting beats buttercream frosting out anytime anyway. I should have warmed the frosting a bit more so the consistency would have looked more like the sauce.

And here are the steps in picture form:

Oh Cadbury eggs do I have a use for you...

The breakfast "potatoes":

The gooey, melty, "eggs" atop the brownie "hams" and "English muffin":

The final plate - it looks so appetizing! 

The dissection: the "English muffin" is a cake doughnut, the "ham" is a brownie, the "eggs" are Cadbury Creme Eggs of course, the "Hollandaise sauce" is cream cheese frosting, and the "breakfast potatoes" are pieces of white bread toasted with cinnamon and sugar.

It was a fun project! I was prepared to throw it in the trash but surprise (or maybe not), the BF wanted to eat it. Ew.

Bistro Maxine

Steph found a crêperie café to try via Yelp in downtown Palo Alto while we were there. We originally wanted to have dim sum but nothing was open earlier than 10 am. Boo.

Enter Bistro Maxine. The place is TINY, as advertised, but at 8:30 am on Saturday morning, the place was empty. The menu features a large selection of both savory and sweet crepes for almost $10/plate. The plates come with a small bowl of fruit.

We ordered:

• Complète; egg, ham, Swiss cheese
• Forestière; egg, ham, Swiss cheese, mushrooms
• Maxine; egg, spinach, mushrooms, Swiss cheese

No pictures of everything because they mostly all looked the same from the outside.

We did also split a sweet crepe for dessert:

Pomme Cannelle; sautéed apples, cinnamon

Is it strange that we're eating dessert at breakfast???

Mmmm... it was kind of heavy for me, but did the trick since I wasn't hungry until well past lunch-time.

King Arthur Flour's Fudge Brownies

My tried-and-true brownie recipe is usually the one by Ina Garten but I was looking for something with a bit different texture (more "classic brownie") and decided to try a new recipe from KAF. This one is "KAF Guaranteed" and had a lot of good reviews which was a positive sign. The guarantee promises:

These brownies, deep chocolate brown inside with a lighter-colored top crust, will be about 3/4" to 1" tall when cut. They'll be ultra-moist without crossing the line into gooey/underbaked.

I wasn't sure if it would measure up to my usual brownie recipe but it passed all expectations and then some.

It was also easier and faster to make - definite plusses.

My changes were to use normal Dutch process cocoa (not the Double Dutch process cocoa) they recommend, and to leave out the espresso powder. Some people in the group don't care for coffee. It was still excellent. I was hesitant to add chocolate chips into the batter because I don't normally like chunks of hard chocolate in the brownie. KAF says you have the choice of adding the chips right away to the warm batter so the chocolate melts and gets incorporated or waiting 20 minutes and adding the chocolate so that there are firm chunks after the brownie is baked. I opted for somewhere in between and added the chips when the batter was still slightly warm, but not warm enough to completely melt the chips.

My brownies took a bit longer than the recommended time - about 38 minutes. They looked beautiful! The crust was shiny as promised, and when I cut them, the chocolate bits melted, making the brownies just slightly moist.  These were fantastic right out of the oven. They have a good chocolate taste, without being overly sweet. The texture is perfect... slightly chewy and fudge-y but not too dense. I did not find them cakey.

I saved a few for a special "project" I want to make in the next week or two... stay tuned!