Honey Mini-Cheesecakes

So here comes the affluence of posts since I put off blogging until now.

Let's start out with honey mini-cheesecakes. I didn't have any graham crackers available to make a crust and I wanted to try something other than the walnut crust I made last time for these apple rose tarts:

I found an oatmeal crust as I browsed cheesecake recipes and here's my variation:

Honey Mini-Cheesecakes: 

Oatmeal crust:

1/2 cup butter (softened)
1/3 cup brown sugar
1 cup oatmeal (I used instant but old-fashioned should work as well)

1. Preheat oven to 350°F.
2. Combine all the ingredients and press into the bottoms of a cupcake pan. (Or if you want to make cleaning and taking out the cheesecakes easier, use cupcake liners.)
3. Bake for 12 minutes.

Filling: 

8 oz cream cheese (softened)
1 egg
2 Tbsp whole milk
1/4 cup honey
1 tsp vanilla extract

1. Keep oven at 350°F.
2. Beat the ingredients together until combined and pour onto the crusts.
3. Bake for 25 minutes.
4. Let cool.

Cinnamon Honey Glaze: 

1 tsp ground cinnamon
2 Tbsp honey
Walnuts (I used a small handful because I only wanted a few to garnish the cheesecakes but you can use as many as you like)

1. In a small pan, heat the cinnamon and honey until warm.
2. Place the walnuts in the glaze and toss to coat.
3. Garnish each cheesecake with a few walnuts and glaze.

The finished product:

Pumpkin Layered Cake

A few days ago, I made a mini-coffee Swiss roll cake for my uncle and since then, I've tried to make 2 more roll cakes and I still have not found a recipe that will yield a perfect, regular-sized roll cake. You would think that if rolling a mini-sized roll cake is easy, then a regular-sized one wouldn't be much more difficult. Wrong. The past two cakes have cracked when I rolled the cake, even when I rolled it when the cake was warm... Oh well, one of these days I'll find a recipe or figure out the secret to assembling a Swiss roll... Since the roll was unsuccessful, I just stacked the cakes to make a layered cake. Here's the recipe to the pumpkin roll cake I mentioned in the previous post: http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/ina-garten/pumpkin-roulade-with-ginger-buttercream-recipe/index.html 

And here's a picture of my pumpkin layered cake: 

The cake itself is very good though, fluffy and moist. I just whipped up some heavy cream with sugar for the filling/topping instead of making the filling in the original recipe. Since the spices are so strong in the cake already, I thought a simple cream would be a nice touch. But of course, it all depends on your tastes! 

Pumpkin Bread

Okay, last post of the day: I made pumpkin bread and pumpkin cake today. Somehow, my family amassed 5 small/medium-sized pumpkins randomly. We were supposedly going to make pumpkin soup with them but that plan never worked out and in the end, I was given the task of using them before they began to rot. I just cut the pumpkins into small pieces/wedges and roasted them without any seasoning in a 350°F oven for around 45 minutes. When I could use a fork to mash the pumpkin, I took them out and puréed all of it in a food processor. The result: pure pumpkin purée. I used about 2 cups of the purée to slather on top of cooked pizza dough to make a pumpkin "pizza" and that was dinner for one night. Today, I used the rest of the purée and the recipe for the pumpkin bread can be found here: http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/pumpkin-bread-recipe/index.html

I cut the original recipe in half to make one loaf and used about 1 cup of sugar instead of the original 1 1/2 cups. In addition, I used 1/2 tsp nutmeg, 1/2 tsp cinnamon, and 1/2 tsp ginger powder in place of the spices used in the recipe. The resulting pumpkin bread had a flavor similar to pumpkin pie so I was quite satisfied.

More on the pumpkin cake will be posted tomorrow or later! 

Pecan and Blueberry Coffee Cake

In addition to eating bánh mì, I made pecan and blueberry coffee cake. The recipe can be found here: http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/ellie-krieger/blueberry-coffee-cake-recipe/index.html

These were a big hit among my family! The cake was perfect in terms of sweetness for my tastes although to some it may not be sweet enough. My favorite part was the pecan and sugar topping: it gave a slightly crunchy crust on the cake.

If you wanted to make a slight variation to the cake, I would definitely add a streusal topping. Maybe not the healthiest option since it will require some butter but I think a crunchier addition to the cake would be worth exercising a bit more for.

Bánh Mì

Now these sandwiches I did not make. My family bought them for dinner yesterday and they were quite delicious. Everything was really fresh and I definitely want more in the future. Here's a photo to make you drool and crave a bánh mì:

Do you want one now? Because I do...

Coconut and Peanut Tapioca/Mochi Bread

So here's another variation of the tapioca bread I talked about in my last post. The version with just coconut will be posted soon when I stop making these variations and go back to the "basics". Anyways, did you know that peanuts and coconut go really well together? Well, if not, you do now. I just used the same recipe for sesame tapioca bread and filled each tin/cup of the cupcake tin a quarter full, so not even halfway full. Then added a tablespoon of a peanut, coconut, and sugar mixture and poured the rest of the batter to cover the filling. The end result is a bread that's not only delicious but incredibly fragrant. You can omit the sesame seeds and just add in the filling but I liked the extra fragrance the sesame seeds provided. I kind of eyed the amount of mixture to use but here are my estimates for the filling (keep in mind that these measurements are not in any way exact):

8 Tbsps ground roasted peanut*
6 Tbsps sweetened shredded coconut
3 Tbsps sugar (add more or less to your taste)

*I just used a food processor to grind them until they resembled course breadcrumbs. And you can buy peanuts that are already roasted or you can roast them yourself: just put them in a 350°F oven for a few minutes. Be careful not to let them burn!)

Sesame Tapioca Bread (Sesame Mochi Bread)

A few weeks ago, I went to a Brazilian steakhouse for the first time. The food was delicious and I had great company so it was a wonderful experience. We were served mini-cheese puffs/bread and after tasting one, I knew I had to find the recipe and make them . They're called pão de queijo and as I searched online through different recipes, I found a Korean sesame tapioca bread that was similar except instead of cheese, the bread contained, well, sesame. (This type of bread uses tapioca flour/starch and thus, can be called tapioca bread. Its texture is similar to mochi, but baked, so it's also known as mochi bread.) However, I couldn't find a recipe for the Korean sesame bread since all the recipes I found included using the bake mix for the bread... In the end, I just browsed through more recipes for pão de queijo, made some adjustments, and constructed my own recipe:

Sesame Tapioca Bread

1 egg
1/3 cup olive oil
2/3 whole milk
1 1/4 cup tapioca flour
1/2 tsp salt (use 1 tsp if you prefer a more salty bread)2 tsps black sesame seeds and more for decoration (see note)

1. Preheat the oven to 450°F and lightly grease 8 cups of a cupcake pan. (You can use a mini-muffin pan to make smaller breads but since I don't have one, I just used a cupcake pan.)
2. Blend all the ingredients in a blender until everything is combined.*
3. Pour the batter into the greased pan until each cup is 3/4 full.
5. Bake for 20 minutes, until they're puffed up and the tops are golden brown.

*You don't have to blend for a long time. If you do, more air will be incorporated into the batter, making the resulting bread have more/larger air pockets and less of the mochi bread.

Note: This is optional, but I like to sprinkle the tops of each bread with some black sesame seeds as garnish before placing them in the oven.

**These breads are best eaten hot/warm when they're just out of the oven. They start to deflate as they cool and if you keep them overnight, make sure to microwave them for about 15 seconds before eating to get the nice mochi texture again.**

You can make this bread sweet or salty depending on your preferences. I have substituted coconut in place of the sesame seeds to make a sweet tapioca bread, which was delicious as well. That recipe will most likely be posted sometime this week since I'll probably make the coconut version of this soon... It feels like I can't get tired of these, they're just so tasty. The texture has a lot to do with it though. If you love mochi like me, you'll love these too!