Roast Chicken with Dijon sauce

Another attempt to master roasting chicken, this time it's with a dijon suace. It was delicious, but a bit bland when compared to the Chicken Adobo. It was very dijon-y and sort of soupy, not sure what happened there. Also I poured the sauce over the chicken so it wasn't very crispy any more. (go look at the blogger's photos, her chicken looks amazing) I paired it with roasted green beans and potatoes as suggested by the original blogger.

Castella or Kasutera Cake

This is a really good cake. I first had it a few years ago when a family friend made it- I got the recipe from her, but I was never able to really duplicate it. I found this recipe online and it magically worked. The cake is really light, like a spongecake, and only slightly sweet from the honey. I'm not sure why it's so light considering the amount of eggs and oil... but it was really good and maybe the small amount of sugar makes up for the amount of eggs?

Funny thing is that this is actually a Portuguese cake. It was brought to Japan in the 16th century by Portuguese merchants (according to wikipedia).

Roasted Garlic Soup

yummy roasted garlic

I was supposed to make this roasted garlic soup with chorizo, but by the end it was italian sausage, potato, rosemary and roasted garlic soup. It was still delicious, but not exactly what I meant to make. The roasted garlic smells so good, you'll have to stop yourself from eating it. I only roasted 2 cloves because I thought 4 cloves would be overkill, but 2 wasn't enough! I normally roast garlic by the head in the oven, wrapped in foil, but this was faster- you just have to be careful not to burn the garlic.

Like I said, I used chopped spicy italian sausage because I didn't have chorizo and then I added diced potatoes because I have way too many potatoes. Delicious, yes, but maybe I'll actually follow the recipe next time.

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.