Chinese Almond Cookies

Happy (belated) Chinese New Year! I decided to celebrate by making some almond cookies. I used Marcona almonds to top the cookies. I had these for the first time around a year ago and I'm HOOKED. They're a bit softer than regular almonds and normally served lightly coated in oil and crunchy salt. Get them at Trader Joe's!

For some reason my cookies didn't quite have the crunchiness of a regular almond cookie, but I'm guessing thats because I used a mish mash of flour. A bit of leftover cake flour, a bit of whole wheat, a bit of all purpose and almond meal (not almond flour).

Chocolate Chip Muffins

It took me awhile to find a good recipe for chocolate chip muffins. This one fulfills all the criteria: oil based cake recipe, not too much chocolate, not too sweet. I added whole wheat flour, flax seed, and used 60% cacao chocolate chips. Delicious, although by the 2nd day they were quite dry so eat them quickly!

German Chocolate Cake

This is a very rich cake. I made this for a roommate's birthday, but I don't think he was able to handle more than a small slice because it is so rich. It is also time consuming, but put in the time and you will be happy with a giant german chocolate cake. I had to make this over two weeknights.

For some reason my ganache was clumping up everytime it cooled down. I tried to pipe a decorative border, but that was a big, giant fail so I made this little ridge to keep the pecan/coconut topping from running over.

Speaking of, I now have a bunch of coconut flakes and pecans to use...

Potato Salad

This isn't just any potato salad recipe. It has pancetta, lemon juice, garlic and rosemary. I needed an alternative to the typical mayo-laden recipes and this was great. It has just enough fat to be delicious, but still light because of the lemon juice and celery.

If you're wondering why there are so many potato recipes, it's because my dad gave me a 10 pound bag of potatoes. They were on sale.

Green Tea Cupcakes with Strawberry Buttercream

Green tea and strawberries is like peanut butter and jelly. This is a REALLY good recipe for green tea cupcakes and strawberry buttercream. I didn't think 1 tablespoon of green tea powder would be enough to color and flavor the cake, but it was very green and green tea flavored. The butter cream recipe is strange- egg whites are involved??? But it came together fine and tastes reallyyyy good. I'm glad it uses strawberry jam instead of real strawberries- my buttercream always looks funky/congealed when I use real fruit.

Tuxedo Cake

Look at this beautiful cake. It is so beautiful. Maybe I'm exaggerating, but this is the most pristine looking layered cake I have ever made. I didn't accidentally break the cake levels in half (hehe although I did break a few bits off here and there) and I didn't make the frosting curdle. PROGRESS!

I had to do this to protect the cake from saran wrap.

It's been awhile since I've made a cake so I decided to make this beautiful tuxedo cake. In the end though I didn't make the chocolate sauce on top since it was already really good. The chocolate cake is really moist and sweet, even when I used whole wheat flour. The frosting is whipped cream, which I loooveeeee. Asian cakes normally use whipped cream instead of the overly sweet buttercream on regular cakes so I'm used to it's texture and taste. Also it's a lot easier to make than say... strawberry buttercream.


This cake took a really long time to make. I only have 2 cake pans so it took me awhile to just bake the cake. Then I had to let it cool down and then do a crumb coat for each layer and then frost it. I was exhausted (this was a weeknight), but it was well worth the reward of eating cake for breakfast and dinner the next 3 or 4 days. You would do it too and you would love it because this cake is GOOD.

Roasted Banana Ice Cream

Sorry, no photos of this bomb ice cream. It just looked like regular vanilla ice cream in photos so I decided to leave it out. Anyways, who thought banana ice cream would be good?? I had it at Bi-Rite up in Norcal and I was HOOKED. I thought about it for weeks when I got back home until I found this recipe from, of course, David Lebovitz. I've also seen recipes for vegan ice cream that consist only of bananas and whatever flavoring you want to add. Not sure how that would taste. The texture of this was sort of strange... it froze very very hard and was creamy, but also had the texture of bananas. Not sure how to describe it. I'm going to try a different banana:cream ratio next time.