On the third day of Christmas...

Can you believe that tomorrow is Christmas Eve? One of the busiest days at Susiecakes! :) I'm excited! After I get off of work tomorrow, my mom and sisters and I are driving down to AZ for the weekend! I am so eager for homemade Vietnamese food, going shopping with my dad, and drinking the best coffee in the world at Seattle Espresso. Ahhh, figures that 2 out of 3 of my favorite things are food-related (maybe 3/3 because one of the best parts of going to the mall is getting a bag full of candy from the Sweet Factory).

My boyfriend just took me on a wonderful Christmas date to Indian food and then out to Yogurtland...AND he got me the Glee soundtrack. Talk about being spoiled :) I also got a mini cupcake pan and icing knife from a friend in the mail this week....so I think I'm pretty much set for Christmas. That's really all I wanted (besides a Chanel bag...but that probably isn't happening in this lifetime).

How about you? What sort of things are on our wishlist? If it's a box of cookies, you know who to contact ;)

Speaking of cookies, I made two more Christmas cookies while my sisters were here this weekend. Both were quite excellent and I daresay I will add them to my classics label. The first one is a Toffee Almond shortbread. It's very easy to make and tastes absolutely delicious. I think the flavors grew more distinct by the second day and they reached that perfect crispy on the outside and buttery soft on the inside (on the first day they were still a little softer than desired). They make a great gift because they keep for a while...and they go great with tea or coffee so be sure to give them to your tea or coffee-loving friends.

By the way, this recipe is from a really neat blog. The blogger tries recipes that are on the outside of packages...this one is from Horizons organic butter!

The dough is meant to be crumbly. This is what mine looked like. :)

These guys are so crisp and flaky on the outside, and soft and buttery on the inside. Wait, I already said that, right? Well, it's worth repeating if only to communicate my excitement about the proper shortbread texture this recipe creates.

Cut and ready to be packaged as gifts!

The second recipe I tried was also a keeper. I've seen countless orange cranberry this and that over the past few weeks because it is apparently a quintessential Christmas flavor. I'm not sure why orange cranberry is considered so particularly festive and holiday-ish because I enjoy this flavor year-round. But who am I judge, especially since I like it so much? The difficulty was trying to hone in on one recipe because there were so many. I ended up just picking randomly and I loved this orange cranberry white chocolate recipe. It had orange juice, orange zest, and white chocolate in it....in addition to the cranberry and oatmeal. I actually added a cup of flour to the recipe because I was making these for my mom and I know she likes her cookies less sweet (I either reduce sugar or increase flour). The orange flavor was fantastic and because of the reduced sweetness, they could be eaten by the handful. :)

Soft, but not too soft (not like the oatmeal peanut butter banana ones that was in my previous post), and very flavorful!

Finally, and this is totally random, Albondigas soup! Haha, this is a Mexican soup that my family and I absolutely loved (we literally went berserk over this soup!) when I was growing up in Arizona. We used to eat at this amazing restaurant called Don José, owned by a family friend's family. They made the best Mexican food I've ever eaten on either side of the US-Mexican border. Sadly, they closed a few years ago and I have been craving the soup ever since then.

In all honesty, this was no where near as good as their soup, so I was sufficiently and unsurprisingly disappointed. Nick loved it though. I liked the meatballs well enough, but I wish the soup itself had more flavor. If you have any recipe version of this soup, please do pass it along to me :)

That is it for now! I have one more cookie to post about and then I will have reached my six Christmas cookies for this year! Hooray 2009!

On the second day of Christmas...

Wow, I am surprisingly doing really well on my 6 days of Christmas Cookies Challenge. Perhaps I should have made 12! :) Oh well, at least I have something to look forward to for next year's Holiday Season bake-off.

I made some really yummy cookies for a Christmas party Nick had for his work. We put them into little cellophane bags and tied red ribbon bows around them for a perfect goodie bag!

The first cookie I made was a Dark Chocolate and Mint chip cookie. It was surprisingly fudgy, which is a good thing in my book. It was almost like the whoopie pie cookie part at Susiecakes!

I am not a big fan of Mint (or dark chocolate for that matter) but it was part of the holiday season color scheme so I had to make it.

By the way if you're wondering where to get these chips, they're just a Nestle Tollhouse mix that I compulsively bought at my last trip to Target. Target is totally one of those places where I go in to buy two things and leave with twenty-two!

I'd say my overall review of this cookie is that it's good as a gift but not something I'd make for myself. However, the next dessert I made is now under my classic label in gmail :) The Almond Toffee Chocolate Bark is really delicious and really easy to make! Another one of those recipes that has proportionally pleasant ingredients (1 cup, 1 teaspoon, etc) yet disproportionate deliciousness.

Crisp, salty, sweet, great.

Please buy good chocolate for this recipe. I mean, you should always buy good chocolate like Ghiradelli or Guittard or the Pound Plus from Trader Joe's but especially when it comes to this bark, which has such few ingredients, you need every single one to be quality.

I do love how this recipe involves just five easy steps. Brown the sugar and butter, pour over the layer of saltine crackers, add chocolate chips to melt on top, and then sprinkle almonds and toffee bits. The result is a slightly sweet, very crunchy, and addictive bark that you can't get enough of.

These guys also keep long, if you don't eat them all at once.

Now this is not a holiday cookie but still worth posting about. It's an oatmeal peanut butter cookie banana cookie that also has peanut butter chips. That's a mouthful but it's not overwhelmingly peanut buttery and is excessively chewy and moist because of the bananas. So if you're looking for something very moist and you like peanut butter banana combos, look no further:)

The original recipe actually calls for chocolate chips and the blogger suggested doing half craisins and half chocolate chips :) It's really up to you but I'm not sure how far your imagination can take you since not many flavors pair well with peanut butter banana.

Look at that banana gooeyness in the front of the cookie!

Well, there's my cookie post! It's funny because I'm blogging as I'm watching Julie and Julia with my sisters. That movie is so motivating and so adorable!

Hope you're having a great weekend!

xoxo

On the first day of Christmas...

my true love gave to me,

Orange-Infused Snow Ball Cookies!

these were quite lovely and fun to make. The recipe is simple: just butter, sugar, and flour but with the extra twist of orange zest and orange juice. Nick was awesome and zested and juiced some fresh Farmer's Market oranges for me while I made the dough. I love rolling cookies and covering dough balls in sugar (these were covered in sugar+orange zest). They turned out perfectly crisp on the outside and soft on the inside like doughnut holes except not quite so dough-y. The orange flavor is very subtle but makes you yearn for more!

They're so cute! Little balls of snow!

These are great gifts because they're not so soft that they'll crumble or break in the process of packaging and transporting :)

My memory is failing me right now as I'm not sure if I've posted about these orange cranberry scones yet. Even if I have, I love love loved how they turned out this time. I've been following a reviewer's notes on how to follow the recipe, and he or she recommends you cream the butter and sugar together as you would in a typical cookie recipe. This time I cut the butter into the flour mixture as the recipe suggests, and the scones turned out much more scone-like. Usually they come out like soft triangular pieces of fluffier cookie dough. I love them like that (and probably prefer them like that most of the time) but this was a more authentic scone result. Slightly flaky, biscuity, and still very moist because of the 1/4 cup of orange juice and the sour cream.

this is one of my favorite recipes of all time. The scones are so delicious and it smells great!

What a delightful breakfast treat! I love scones almost as much as I love muffins :)

Well, I'm a bit rushed because I am going to see Up in the Air with my man before the Christmas party starts :) I can't believe my weekend is almost over! But it has been fantastic and the party will be super fun I'm sureeeee!!!

Merry Merry Christmas!

Chicken Tortilla Soup and Pad Thai

Hi everyone!
I had another amazing week. I can't believe how good life is right now. My two jobs are awesome! Not only do I get a job working at the cutest bakeshop I've ever visited, I get to work with a bunch of cool girls who are my age, the time flies by, I get free desserts to give to friends and myself, *and* on top of that....

I sometimes get to help out in the kitchen!

Yes, this week, I mentioned to the assistant head baker that my dream is to open my own bakery and he passed that along to the head baker who let me help out today (I mean, we all get to help out but it was my first time!). Baking in a bakery is a whole different kind of beast and yes, Mrs. Lerum, very epic. It involves brainwork and technique. No wonder people pay ivy-league sized tuition to go to culinary school! All I did was ice a hundred palm-sized sugar cookies but I could see that I have much to learn.

My other job is equally fun! I love how I can go into both jobs and by the end of the day when my manager says "Thanks for your help--you can go home now!" I think: What! It's already time to go home? and Aw, I don't want to go home yet! I don't think many people have that reaction to their jobs :) This week with Mariah OBrien, I got to go my favorite store Anthropologie to buy some cute, shabby chic knobs for a client and drive to a fabric factory to find linen fabrics for a living room....among about 10 other things that were on my To-Do list!

I do feel like working 6 days a week is a bit fatiguing. As soon as I get off of work, I buy fresh groceries and go home and cook, eat with Nick, and then pass out. I hope that the holidays are refreshing and restful (but I somehow doubt that).

Anyways, as a super-challenge for myself, I think I'm going to try to bake 6 holiday cookies/desserts for the 12 days before Christmas. I really wanted to do 12 cookies for the 12 days before Christmas, BUT I probably don't have time for that and I don't know how I can get them eaten fast enough.

So--for the next two weeks, check back for fantastic Christmas/Holiday dessert recipes!

Until then, here's a post about my favorite soup recipe and one of my favorite dishes of all time!

Chicken Tortilla Soup was perfect for this rainy week in Los Angeles. This soup is easy to make, and tastes fantastic. It's really filling as well, which is not true of all soups.

I think the recipe is a great starting point. I adhere to all of it but I add a cup of cooked brown rice (rice makes it so much more yummy), a packet of taco seasoning, hot sauce  of your choice (we bought this amazing hot sauce in sonoma valley that is out of this world!), chopped fresh cilantro, two bay leaves, and diced tomatoes (fresh or canned, and however much you want).

We top it with sour cream and shredded cheese and it's one of the most satisfying one-dish meals you can serve.

This pad thai recipe was good, but I'm still looking for a pad thai recipe that replicates the gooey, savory, almost overly tasty mess that you get in restaurants like Thai Taste. Nick really liked this and said it was "ten times better than Rock Sugar" which is an upscale restaurant his boss took us to. He said it tasted really clean and flavorful. So there you go--two reviews in one :)

I really love pad thai. This wasn't exactly what I was looking for in a pad thai recipe but it was still pretty darn satisfying. If you are looking for tamarind paste, I got mine at Whole Foods. But call ahead to make sure they're stocked.

We're going to a Christmas party tonight and tomorrow night is the one I'm hosting with Nick at his apartment! I'm so excited for the potluck dinner and the festivities to follow. I'm making dessert--part of the 12 days of Christmas cookies extravaganza! They're called orange-infused snow balls. YUM!

Spicy Stir Fried Orange Chicken--a long overdue post

So I'm sitting here eating a bowl of Heath ice cream after having some Blue Moon (with the requisite slice of orange) and a big bowl of Chicken Tortilla soup. I'm feeling guilty. Of course it's not about the ice cream or the beer or the big dinner I just had. It's because I haven't posted in a while. I try to make very consistent and frequent blog posts because 1. I feel to loyal to my fanbase (which is probably bigger in my head than it is in real life) 2. I do cook and bake often enough that posting every couple days is a necessity (lest my posts become long novels).

Anyways, it's been a while but it's mainly because I've been taking the week to adjust to my new schedule. Working 45+ hours a week, 6 days a week, is a huge contrast to having all the time in the world. I love both my jobs tremendously and I feel so fortunate to be working in my two areas of passion: baking and interior design. I got to ice some mini cupcakes (which are the cutest thing everrrr) the other day at Susiecakes, which was a thrill because it felt so professional in their huge kitchen with all their huge kitchen utensils and supplies. I have to say that I'm learning a lot about running a business (and a rapidly growing one at that!) and that is super important to any bakery. So that is super cool :) And working for Mariah is fun, intensely busy, and quite the learning experience. Very general sentences about insanely fun jobs so if you want to hear more, just email me :)

OKAY. On to the spectacular dish.
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This recipe became an instant classic. Nick oohs and aahs over my food quite often, because he is a very grateful and gracious participant in eating my food, but his groans of happiness were unparalleled this time.

I know I have built up the excitement and suspense surrounding this recipe, and I hope it doesn't disappoint you. It truly is unique but not too out there not to be readily liked by anyone who like stir fry. It calls for a chinese cooking wine but I used gin as a substitute (a suggested substitute by many experts...it wasn't just a ploy to incorporate alcohol into my entrée I promise). I made sure to cook with the lid on though because it's silly to waste alcoholic content! :)

This dish also uses a litany of classic asian sauces or ingredients including hoisin, rice wine vinegar, sesame oil, peanut oil, and chili paste (read: Sriracha!). I was very curious to see what these would taste like when combined with 1/2 cup of orange juice and 1/4 cup of gin. I think my cooking intuition is piqued in two different ways:  I either feel completely ecstatic because I can feel a perfect recipe coming together (e.g. the Ina Garten chocolate cupcake recipe!) or I feel utterly curious yet completely at peace as to how it will turn out. That's how I felt this time. I was eager to taste the end result but had no doubt in my mind that it would be stellar.

Spicy Stir Fried Orange Chicken is stellar. The sauce is, somehow surprisingly, very orange. Even after all the other ingredients, the orange zest and juice create a very vibrant and healthy looking orange sauce. And it tastes pungent, spicy, juicy, savory, tasty. Thank you, Newfoundland (which is apparently in Canada).

You can't see the sauce too well because it sunk to the bottom of this dish, but it's there! And it's gorgeous

A close up :) Even prettier, which is rare for close-ups (at least for people, maybe not for foods)

Okay, this is just one of the many delicious desserts that Susiecakes makes. It's a pumpkin cheesecake, individual size. I also love their sour cream, but I just wanted to show you how cute it is.

Now, I have a lot to catch you up on, in terms of recipes worth sharing, including the Chicken Tortilla soup I made tonight. So I will not make promises (since I've been breaking more than keeping any lately) but I will make an elephant effort to post some more soon....:) I'm uber excited about this week--two girls' night out and three Christmas parties next weekend! Let the holiday festivities (and the holiday baking) begin!

PS I had my first cooking fest tonight. I made a thai yellow curry, an asian salad (with farmer's market ingredients), a thai salad, 10 breakfast burritos, and a chicken tortilla soup! Quite a productive evening. Now time for a movie with (more) ice cream! Hope you all had a great weekend!

Yummy baked goods!

I really do love working at Susiecakes. Last night, Nick asked what was for dessert, and I said: Whoopie pie, sour cream cheesecake, pumpkin cheesecake, brownie with ice cream, lemon bar, chocolate chip cookie...cupcakes of any flavor. The list goes on and on. BUT, I think the best part about having good treats constantly available is that it makes eating *my* homemade stuff even better when I manage to find the time to make it.

The first thing I usually do on mornings off or Sundays is....guess what? BAKE! This weekend, before church, I made some blueberry sugar doughnut muffins. Lauren recently commented about how everything I make has such long names. Well, it's because of two very worthy reasons: 1. I like to think the stuff I make is complex. 2. Long names give more accurate descriptions of what the baked good tastes like. It would be unjust to call this muffin just a "blueberry muffin" because it really truly is like a cross between a sugar doughnut (crispy, buttery, sugar-y top) and a muffin (light, doughnut-y texture in the middle but tastes like a muffin and looks like one!). I really really really liked this muffin because it did not taste like a healthy muffin. I like healthy muffins sometimes but let's face it, muffins are not meant to be a healthy breakfast. It's meant to be a fun one. Muffins are on the top of my favorites foods list for this reason (I recently added curry to my favorite foods list because I realized we eat it at least once a week...but that's a side note). They are fun! Delicious! They come in a variety of flavors! YAY

The tops are my favorite. Just like a sugar doughnut...but with berries :)

I had 6. The gluttony of Thanksgiving continues :)

I also made some very traditional, very yummy oatmeal peanut butter chip cookies the other day. This recipe is very basic but very reliable. I like it because it makes perfectly chewy cookies. And the peanut butter chips are a nice change to chocolate chip. I mixed in a few butterscotch chips as well, which was a recommendation from a smart reviewer. Sweet and salty--and oatmeal-y oat-y (ew, mealy never sounds good even when attached to "oat", so I'll say oat-y instead) Can't have it any better.

By the way, this recipe has over 1,500 reviews. That's solid. Classic.

Tomorrow, I will post about the incredible, delectable, interesting, unforgettable dish that I made on Monday. Come prepared. :)