Friday, May 29, 2009

Gelato City

After attending the bread making class at Sur La Table last month, I got a 15% off coupon, which gave me the perfect excuse to splurge on an ice cream maker attachment for my KitchenAid stand mixer. I have wanted an ice cream maker for the longest time, so once I got my hands on it, I started mass producing gelato, and it could not come at a better time as the heat wave started to hit LA.  First, I made Nutella gelato from one of Giada De Laurentiis’ recipes on Food Network.  Giada is my husband’s favorite chef to watch on Food Network (for obvious reasons), so needless to say, he loved the Nutella gelato.

Then I found this other recipe on Epicurious from the May 2009 issue of Bon Appétit and made fresh strawberry gelato. It turned out perfect, just like gelato you would get at a gelateria. I would highly recommend trying out the recipe yourself. Enjoy the summer with some ice cold treats, my friends!

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Strawberry Gelato

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Nutella Gelato

Wednesday, May 13, 2009

All dough’d Out

Cookies, cakes, and desserts are generally easy enough to make just by following and tweaking recipes, but I had always find making breads to be intimidating. So couple of weeks ago, I took a bread making class at Sur La Table, in the hopes to expand my repertoire.  Boy did I learn a lot! From baguettes, brioche, pizza dough, white bread, to cheddar cheese buttermilk biscuits. Last weekend, I put what I learnt to good use, and made baguettes and pizza for my friends.  Nothing beats fresh ingredients, no matter how simple, on a homemade pizza dough.  I just love the house smelling like a bakery. 

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Then on Sunday, we made crepes.  On the left is  mine, with fresh strawberries, vanilla ice cream, and chocolate syrup. On the right, we have Herman’s nutella vanilla ice cream crepe. What a carb-loading weekend, and boy was it fulfilling!

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Friday, May 8, 2009

✿✿ Sakura Sakura ✿✿

My parents were here visiting several weeks ago, and I made these almond spritz cookies for them to take to my brother up north. It was right around cherry blossom season, so I made them shaped like ✿ . The cookies came out light and buttery, with just a hint of almond to them. They tasted a lot like the Danish butter cookies I grew up eating in Hong Kong. You know, the ones that are packaged in the royal blue tin can (藍罐曲奇). I hope my brother enjoyed them as much as we did, and I wonder if he shared them with his friends.

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