If I get a chance . . .

I've been itching to test a few items for the restaurant.

• Just tested edamame falafels with cucumber salad and sweet chili sauce for an appetizers at my office. It's a thumbs up but I still would like to tweek  it a bit. Maybe adding a some cilantro and mint to the falafel. Need to fiddle with it more, kind of to soft to put in the deep fryer. Need to get it a bit firmer but not dried out. I was thinking maybe adding some grain?
• I have an idea for pan like in an pan, with caramelized apples with or without homemade an. For those who don't know what an pan is is a sweet bun with sweeten red bean in it. 
• I just saw spring roll with apples tastespotting. Thought I could make it and add some caramel sauce on top? Thais make a banana fritter that way.
• coconut syrup for the shave ice. I was thinking of combining simple syrup and reduce coconut milk
• And that leads into almond float--I tried it before and liked it but want to do it again. Instead of almond I made it with vanilla instead. Maybe I can combine it together with shave ice and the coconut syrup.
• Dango for shave ice. Need to figure out the shelf life of it. If it is too short, not worth it. 
• 2 different cupcake flavors: hummingbird and tiramisu. Both of these have beautiful presentation-a pineapple flower on the hummingbird and mascarpone frosting dusted with cocoa on the tiramisu.

Don't know when I can do this as I barely can keep up with my current  baking schedule. 


And speaking of having no time, yesterday, when I drop off my baked goods to the restaurant, WG and a friend was having lunch and talking. He springs an idea for afternoon tea at the restaurant during a slow times. 

My new toys

To help my kitchen crazy, I've got three new toys to my arsenal. [Whoa! I know so many post in such short amount of time. I'm making up for all the dead air.]

My Cuisinart

I got a new food processor. The old one went to the restaurant [was not too happy about that]. The frugal me kept looking for sale and finally around Christmas I found a one day sale at Macy's and I had a coupon [I thought I hit the jackpot]. 

Test Baking

UPDATE: I found the where I got the pear tat recipe. Here's the link: http://chowhound.chow.com/topics/409177. And made a second one for the restaurant, pears not as ripe. Would have been better if I waited a couple days. My suggestions is to wait to the pears are really ripe, like "juice run down your arm if you bite into" ripe. It will totally be worth it.

Been testing a few things past few months when I can fit things into restaurant baking schedule. A few needs more testing, one winner on first try. I'm sure the people at work are happy with me testing as many recipes as I can. Got a few pictures to share.

Pear Tart [looks more like a cake]

Been wanting to try out this recipe for ages. Simple, with the minimum of ingredients and I had the perfectly ripen pears for it. The problem is I can't remember where I got this recipe. I'm trying my best to find because it was such a hit at work.

It's has 3 very ripe anjou pears cut into 8ths then smushed into this buttery batter. It takes a long time to bake (about an hour) and in the beginning I thought it was a disaster. Batter looked so soupy from all the juice of the pears, the batter wasn't rising and it wasn't browning. But then about 1/2 way into the baking time, the batter start enveloping the pears and the browning begins. The finish result is a cake-like tart with creamy, custardy, chucky pear center. So delicious.

Cooking measurements

Just in case, you ever never to convert measurements, I just found this site to help me figure out approx. how much sugar was in my sweet potato pie per slice. Cool.

http://www.reluctantgourmet.com/conversion_tables.htm

My Quince Obsession

UPDATE: I just realized I never said what it tasted like. When it was cooking up, the smell was very wine-y and intense. The taste is very hard to describe--sweet, wine, port, prunes are few words that come to my mind when I taste it. But the taste isn't intense like what the smell when it was cooking up. Texture is a little chunky. I can see how it would go well with some cheese as the Spanish would do.

has been quiet, in the background of my ever crazy mind since I heard the story on npr [Reading up on it, find bath products scented with it, never in the stores, never getting to the farmers' market to see if they have any]. I recently spotted a lonely scrubby quince tree near my route to the restaurant and have been plotting how I could pick me some [on private property, no where to park without getting noticed]. So when someone at work told me she got some from our office fruit/veggie people, I jumped at the chance to buy some.

If you never heard or seen a quince, it looks like a bumpy pear/apple in a yellow green color as you can see above. It's scent is incredible when it is ripe, can be almost too sweet of a scent. It can't be eaten raw, tastes horrible. But has lots of pectin in it, to make it perfect for jams and jellies. Now I have  2 lbs in my hands and I will cook up some jam this weekend to add to vanilla cake or maybe some Earl Grey Tea cake with vanilla buttercream.

I haven't posted in over a month

I know, I know. I've been busy, baking every chance I get and I still can't keep up. Cheesecake, cheesecake, cheesecake. aaargh! But this week, I'm hoping to cook up a cheese pumpkin, that I got from the fruit/veggie deliver at the office, to make pumpkin cheesecake and the rest for some pumpkin pancakes. I got the cheese pumpkin because it's suppose be the best to make this out of.

I was also busy baking up some Halloween cupcakes (not my favorite holiday since events of last year) for a friend's son, spiders and ghosts. I didn't realize that black frosting was so hard to make. Thank goodness for the internet. Just touch green to get my black.  I hope the kids enjoy the cupcakes.

Here's some picture of the pumpkins, spiders and ghost. The light orange pumpkin is the cheese pumpkin.

Brownies

Been wanting to test this brownie recipe for a while. Thought that it probably would sell well at the restaurant. So I left the restaurant early today, [I was crabby, not a good mood for being around people] and decided to bake.

First things first, cheesecake. Needed to get this week's cheesecake done. [check]

I've made these brownies before, it is very chocolate-y. Over a pound of chocolate [no, wait, it's closer 2 pounds] divided into 20 pieces. I wanted to test them to see if the customers would like them. And of course, I'll bring some into the office. They are really my official taste testers [last weeks tasting was nutella rice crispie treats, thumbs up].

I must admit this baking sure help my bad mood [or could it be I just need a break from the restaurant].

Recipes testing and my broken cake

UPDATE: 9.10.11

I crossed off what I tested.
_____________________

With the long weekend here, I'll have some time [one day] to do some recipe testing. Here's my list of what I want to test:

nutella rice crispie treats

chocolate malted cupcakes

plum crumble or crisp

brownies

mango something

chocolate dobash--like Delite bakery in Hawaii--maybe turn into cupcake

cream puffs

mochi something

macarons

My recipe testing list is so long and always growing. Most likely, I will only get to 2 of them. I also have make up a cheesecake. That extra day isn't enough.

As for my broken cake, I tried making one of my favorites, Sour Cream Apricot Cake for the restaurant. It's a very moist and delicate [not too sweet] bundt cake with chopped dried apricots soaked in some kind of liqueur [I used some Applekorn]. I thought it would be great with dollop of whipped cream. Well, when I filpped it out of the pan [I knew it was going to be bad when I had to shake the pan to death], only the bottom half came out, the top was stuck in the pan. I guess I did a very sucky job and greasing and flouring the pan. 

Oh well, not Oat and the staff at the restaurant can enjoy my broken cake. I tried it, it was delicious. Maybe next week, the customers can enjoy, too.

I'll post some pics of my testing soon.

boxes of cupcakes

Just wanted to show off few more cupcake photos. I got a bit obsessed with the batches [most of my recipes make 18 to 24 cupcakes] and how I was going to get to a 100. Ended up making the last box with raspberry [1/2 batch] and red velvet [1/2 batch to event. 1/2 batch to restaurant and the customer's favorite] to soothe my obsession and putting me over 100.

100+ cupcakes

And yes, I'm crazy and exhausted.

Decided to do this project/job a couple of weeks ago. I thought I could get word out about the restaurant and what an accomplishment to make 100+ cupcakes.

Here's some pics of the cupcakes I wanted to share.

Naked

Frosted

Flavors made: Red Velvet with ganache filling and vanilla cream cheese frosting; Fresh Raspberry with Vanilla buttercream; Chocolate with nutella filling and Chocolate buttercream; Chai Tea with orange marmalade filling and caradomon spice cream cheese frosting; Orange  with passion fruit filling and passion fruit buttercream topped with toffee crunch; White Peach with vanilla cream cheese frosting. 

Hope people enjoy it!