Chocolate Pancakes

Yesterday, being a lazy Saturday morning, I made some pancakes for breakfast. The kids were asking for whipped cream and chocolate syrup to go with it and we said that we only do that with chocolate pancakes. So, this morning, the kids asked for chocolate pancakes. We’ve always bought a mix for chocolate pancakes but since we haven’t done that in a while, I decided to look for a recipe online and mix a batch from scratch.

Thanks to the Internet, I found this recipe that doesn’t call for buttermilk. I just tweaked it a bit by adding 3 teaspoons of baking powder which made the pancakes fluffy. I also skipped the chocolate chips and the powdered sugar.

 

I made the pancakes and Jon made the chocolate syrup.  The cream, unfortunately, didn’t want to get whipped so it’s just cream.

Get a pancake.

Put a dollop of cream, as much or as little as you like.

Then drizzle with chocolate syrup.

It was great! Better than the box mix we used before. It would be even better with sausages or bacon on the side, which unfortunately we didn’t have at that time.  Dig in!

 

 

No-Bake Granola Bars

I transcribe market research audios from home. Today, most of the files were about cereal bars or granola bars. It really made me crave for granola bars while listening to participants describe their experience with the bars.  We had some Quaker Oat Cookies and I ate a pack but it didn’t alleviate the craving.

I finally had to take a break and whip up my own. I found a really simple recipe for Energy Bars online and I immediately made a batch.  I had to make a lot of substitutions, though.  I don’t have any Rice Krispies so I just used oatmeal and we only had rolled oats so that’s what I used.  We also didn’t have raisins but I found some dried mixed fruits (papaya, banana and pineapple) and I used that instead.  I also liked nuts so I mixed in some almonds and walnuts. And finally, we didn’t have maple syrup so I used honey instead.

Just knowing it was in the ref gave me enough energy to continue working.  After a couple of hours, I could finally eat some!

 

It may not be the same as the store-bought ones but it’s still good.  It’s really great with coffee.  I’m now ready to do more work.  Bring it on!

 

Cinnamon-Walnut Cake

I love cinnamon rolls.  It’s been on my list for so long but I still have not had the opportunity to try it.  I think it takes a lot of effort and I haven’t felt motivated enough to do it. I have bookmarked a lot of recipes already and I will try it within this year. (At least, I think this is one resolution I would get to accomplish.)

So, when I saw a recipe for Cinnamon-Swirl Bread, I knew I had to give it a try.  It seemed simple enough to follow and I think it’s also a teeny bit healthier than cinnamon rolls since it doesn’t have an icing or frosting.  I tried it last week and it’s a winner.

I think I’ve found a keeper. I wouldn’t call this bread though.  It’s a cake. I will call my creation, Cinnamon-Walnut Cake.  It’s really great and the walnuts give it a nice crunch and a break from the sweetness.

Don’t you just want to take a bite of that?

 

Dutch Crunch Bread

I can’t believe the last post I made here was middle of October.  I haven’t really tried a lot of new things in the last couple of months as things were hectic and the holidays were crazy.

I did manage to cross off another item from my list.  I made Dutch Crunch Bread last month, I just didn’t have time to blog about it.  (I also didn’t get to take great pictures, but what the heck)

It was pretty good.  I’m not exactly sure how it’s supposed to taste since I’ve never even heard of this bread until a friend suggested I try making it.  It had an interesting crunch when you bite into it.  I’m not sure I’ll be making it again, though since it takes more work than the usual loaf or bun.  But then, I was also baking other stuff when I made this.  I wasn’t really focused on just this bread so maybe I will try it one more time and see if it’s a keeper.  In any case, it’s always fun to try new things.  So go ahead and try it out!

 

Squash Gratin

I really love looking at recipes online.  It’s always a treat for the family whenever we try a new recipe.  Most of the time, it is successful and they would ask me to make the dish again after a week or so.  Sometimes though, the ingredients are challenging to find and so I would have to use local ingredients.

One recipe that caught my eye was Butternut Squash.  Here, we only have one type of squash, I don’t even know what kind of squash it is but looking at the pictures here, what we have is Fairytale Pumpkin Squash.  What a nice name!  I actually don’t like cooking with squash too much since it’s a lot of work peeling and slicing.  It was great that we did this on a Sunday so Jon did all the peeling and slicing.  😀

We had potato gratin before so I was really excited to try it out with squash instead.  What’s great about this dish is it’s vegetarian.  I can’t really say that it’s very healthy since it has cream and milk and cheese but at least there’s no meat and we can always use the calcium from the dairy products.  These are the substitutions I made:  kankong instead of spinach, evaporated milk for the half-and-half, and cream for the creme fraiche.

 

I’m happy to report that it was a success.  Everybody loved it and they all had seconds.  Try it out!

 

 

Potato Croquettes

Potato Croquettes are on my list of stuff to make after seeing this picture in Not Quite Nigella’s blog.  It looked very delicious.  Although the post was about making it healthier and using fryers without oil, I made mine by baking it in the oven.

It was okay but kinda fell short of expectations.  I guess that’s my fault for altering the recipe a bit, I had less than the needed potatoes and I used the whole egg (I hate waste and I don’t really want to freeze one egg white).  Also, I think it needed to stay in the oven for an extra 5 to 10 minutes to make it really crisp.

It was a learning experience.  I’ll probably make this again and make sure it looks really crunchy before taking it out of the oven.

 

Pizza Puffs

I have this bad habit of spending hours just looking at food blogs I find through food gawker.  It’s really food porn at it’s best.  It is a good source of recipes though and there are so many I want to try.

So one recipe I found are for pizza puffs.   Everybody loves pizza and if we can have it without waiting, it’s worth a try!  I just used bacon instead of pepperoni and omitted the olives which no one eats it in my family anyway.

You really need to dip it in sauce as it is a bit dry.  We just used regular tomato sauce and you can mix in some Parmesan cheese to make it better.

And there you have it, pizza in a flash 🙂

 

Steamed Eggs

I saw a recipe for Steamed Eggs in a Reader’s Digest magazine a few months ago and I decided to give it a try.  I’ve never had steamed eggs so I had no idea what to expect.  The closest experience we’ve had with steamed eggs is leche flan which we all love.

But the Reader’s Digest recipe is a savory recipe so I’m pretty sure it would taste different.  I didn’t even know if we were supposed to eat it with bread or with rice or just by itself.  After googling it, I found out it’s quite a popular Chinese dish and great with rice.  So that’s what we did.

The recipe called for salted eggs and century eggs spread out at the bottom of the pan.  Since we’re not great fans of century eggs, I only used salted eggs.  Then I used 4 eggs and mixed this with about 2 cups of broth.  Well, not real broth but a chicken broth cube dissolved in water.  I placed this on top the salted eggs and steamed it for about 30 min.

This is the first time I’ve actually used the steamer of my rice cooker.

It said to steam until set but still wobbly so I tried to do that.  Then top with some sesame oil, soy sauce and spring onions.  The sesame oil really gives off a wonderful scent.  It just smelled like Chinese food right after I topped it with sesame oil.

I think I should have steamed it for 5 more minutes because it broke down when I sliced into it and it looked just like taho.  The texture is similar to taho as well.  The salted eggs were a nice break from the smoothness of the eggs.  The spring onions also gave a nice contrast and some freshness to the dish.  The kids had no complaints but they weren’t raving about it either.

Overall, it was a nice dish as it is different from what we usually eat.  Would I serve it again?  I’m not sure, maybe.

 

Creamy Macaroni and Cauliflower

I saw Jamie Oliver make this on one of his shows.  I just couldn’t remember what he called is so I’m calling it, creamy macaroni and cauliflower.  He said it was supposed to be similar to macaroni and cheese with the added benefit of having cauliflower and bacon.  Now, everything is better with bacon.  🙂

It turned out pretty okay, I think.  There was a topping of bread crumbs, bacon bits and parmesan cheese sprinkled on top and this provided a nice contrast to the creamy macaroni.

I couldn’t find the recipe on his website though so I just did it the way I remembered it.  I just boiled the macaroni and cauliflower together in one pot, and they cook at the same time.  After draining, I mashed the cauliflower in the baking dish.  I mixed in a pack of cream and a cup of the pasta water.  I also mixed in some cheese and seasoned with salt and pepper.  Then, I sprinkled the topping and baked for about 30 min at 180 degrees Celcius.

Of course a pasta dish should be served with bread so I made some Herb Garlic Baguettes to go with it.  I just shaped it a bit differently.  It smelled so good and was great with butter.

Overall, it a pretty good dinner.  I guess what would make it even better is to also have bacon bits mixed in with the macaroni to cut through the creaminess.  Let’s eat!

 

Peach Scones

I’ve never tasted scones so I don’t really know what they are.  I’ve been curious about them since watching the Barefoot Contessa Ina Garten make them in her show.  I thought they were like cookies but I didn’t really know what to expect.

I wanted to try making some scones and since we had a can of peaches sitting around, I decided to make some peach scones.

I certainly didn’t expect the dough to be so wet.  I guess I should have since there’s cream mixed in it.  So instead of shaping it on a flat surface then cutting out the shapes, I just scooped it out using our biggest ice cream scoop.  My kids helped in brushing the tops with cream and sprinkling the sugar on top.  I just used regular sugar instead of cinnamon sugar since my kids are not big fans of cinnamon.

I didn’t really know what to expect but it came out softer than I thought.  And I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that it wasn’t too sweet since the recipe only called for 4 tablespoons of sugar.  My kids ate one each but they didn’t really like it so much.  I think I shouldn’t have added the almond extract as the smell was quite strong and a bit of a turn-off for the kids.

I was thinking it would be like cookies but it’s more like bread.  Jon decided to spread some butter on it and that made it better.  I guess it would go well with butter and jam.  It was okay but I probably won’t be making this again soon (since I had to eat most of it!).  At least I got to cross one item of my list!  Yey!