Autumnal Cookies

Yuzu is Reading Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist Rachel Cohn & David Levithan

I have been out sick most of this week. Some virus has been making the rounds through my office, as several other coworkers have been calling in sick as well. I've been in my pajamas for the past couple of days. Watched a lot of daytime TV. Surprisingly didn't do any crafting or much reading (I'm too lazy and tired to make an effort with anything).

Last weekend, however, I baked some cookies to welcome the season of autumn. They're plain sugar cookies with a festive touch — green & brown sprinkles and orange candy pumpkins that sort'a look like hearts.

©2008 Yuzu Eats

We're still experiencing a bit of a heatwave in southern California. Temperatures are higher than normal. It was cloudy and rained for a split second last weekend, but it's back to hot, sunny days again. I wish it would quit being so hot!

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Un-Macarons for Bastille Day

Yuzu is Listening To The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian Harry Gregson-Williams

In celebration of France's national holiday, I brought some wannabe French treats to work today. Almost everyone knows of France's famous little sweet, the macaron. Inspired by My Paper Crane's wannabe macarons, I baked my own version of the treat.

©2008 Yuzu Eats

They're sugar cookies sandwiched together with frosting. The brown ones are chocolate, the pink are raspberry, the green are pandan, the yellow are yuzu, and the violet and teal ones are almond-flavored (I ran out of other flavorings, although ube would've been cool for violet). With the exception of the chocolate "macarons", I used bottles of pure extracts to flavor the cookies and frosting. I cheated on the frosting and used the store-bought kind, but I changed the flavor up a bit to match the cookies I paired them with. The longest step in the process was mixing the food coloring to get each section of cookie dough (and frosting) the right color, but I'm really happy with how colorful and flavorful these turned out.

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Cupcakes for My Sister

Yuzu is Reading Without You: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and the Musical Rent Anthony Rapp

My sister's birthday was last week. She'd just given birth to her second daughter the day before. As we awaited their return home from the hospital, I baked cupcakes to celebrate both birthdays. I was babysitting my two-year-old niece at the time, so I didn't want to fuss with a bunch of ingredients. Thank goodness for boxed cake mixes. Vanilla cupcakes with vanilla frosting...mmm!

©2008 Yuzu Eats

My sister likes her cupcakes simple. So I didn't pipe the frosting or cover the tops with sprinkles. Instead, I used an offset spatula to spread the frosting, and I topped the cakes with sliced strawberries. They came out quite tasty, and my sister liked them a lot. Mission completion!

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Bakery Tour at Disney's California Adventure

Yuzu is Listening To Under the Blacklight Rilo Kiley

On one of several trips to the Magic Kingdom this month, I took some photos of the Bakery Tour by Boudin® Bakery at Disney's California Adventure theme park. In all the years that I've been going to the Disneyland Resort, I didn't even realize this tour existed.

There's a process that Boudin's been using for over 150 years to make their famous sourdough bread. I wasn't really paying attention to the video that was playing overhead as I walked through the tour because I was busy trying to take indoor pictures from behind the glass while munching on the free sourdough bread samples they gave me when I first entered the tour. Isn't it cute how there are Mickey Mouse-shaped heads throughout the bakery? Disney has to leave their mark on everything, after all.

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©2008 Yuzu Eats

After the sourdough breads are done, they're brought over to the kitchen where someone slices into the tops to turn them into bread bowls. Then they're ready to fill with a variety of delicious soups served up in the theme park. The next time you find yourself in a Disney theme park, you have to try a soup bread bowl (especially the clam chowder bowls served in New Orleans Square at Disneyland). They're quite yummy, and they're definitely a nice break from typical amusement-park food.

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Caprese Tartlets

Yuzu is Watching December Boys Daniel Radcliffe, Lee Cormie, Christian Byers, James Fraser

My department had a holiday pot luck today at work. If I ever bring food to share with coworkers, it's almost always something sweet. But I opted for the savory this time because I figured there'd be a lot of sweets already. We've been receiving baskets of muffins, cookies, chocolate and fruit from various vendors. I'm kind'a sugar'd out...and it's not even Christmas yet!

I woke up early this morning to bake something I came up with while I was grocery shopping over the weekend. I knew I wanted to make something very simple with very few ingredients. And, well, here's my contribution to the department pot luck.

©2007 Yuzu Eats

I used crescent-roll dough to create little shells and filled them with shredded mozzarella, diced tomatoes, fresh basil and freshly ground pepper. I baked them in a mini-muffin pan for eight minutes in a 375ºF oven, and the result was four dozen little caprese-style tartlets.* Kind of a nice festive snack for the holidays!

*Or you can call them what they look like — mini pizzas.

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Green Tea Muffins

Yuzu is Watching Rent Anthony Rapp, Adam Pascal, Jesse L. Martin, Wilson Jermaine Heredia, Idina Menzel, Taye Diggs, Rosario Dawson, Tracie Thoms

I went to the ophthalmologist last week and found out I have a bacterial infection in both of my eyes, so I've been on antibiotic eye-drop medication for about six days now. I am back at work today, and so far my eyes are doing okay. I just can't strain them too much by reading a whole lot. So what am I doing? I'm blogging! ;P

Picked up some green tea muffin mix at Trader Joe's last week and baked them for my parents, who love to drink green tea. I'd tried them previously when someone baked them at work, but wanted to give them a go myself. I used my jumbo muffin pan for the first time, and the batter was the perfect amount to make six plump muffins. I added a few pinches of sugar to the mix because I personally like green tea a little sweet. The muffins came out yummy, moist and not very sweet at all. I think I found a good balance of sweetness because they were sweet enough for me (a sweet tooth), yet not too sweet for my parents (who aren't into sweets as much as I am).

©2007 Yuzu Eats

I finally watched Rent, the movie based on one of my most favorite Broadway musicals ever. I had really low expectations of it because you can never be too sure about stage-to-screen adaptations. But it was surprisingly good! I've watched it twice already. My Rent CDs are back in rotation after a few weeks' hiatus.

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Pumpkin Cake

Yuzu is Watching Knocked Up Seth Rogen, Katherine Heigl

I hope you all had a lovely Thanksgiving holiday last week! Did you eat good? I didn't eat as much as I expected to. The food was great, of course, but I guess I just wasn't in the mood for stuffing myself.

For dessert, my mom baked her traditional walnut cherry cheese delight (which is basically a yummy cheesecake), and I baked something new. Pumpkin cake! Well, pumpkin bars, depending on how you slice it. I call it cake because it wasn't dense enough to be a bar, and it was so moist and delicious, it's pretty much like a cake!

©2007 Yuzu Eats

The recipe for the cake/bar portion is courtesy of Food Network, with minor tweaking by yours truly. The frosting recipe is for my most favorite cream cheese frosting in the world. Try it — it's easy!

Pumpkin Cake
4 eggs
1 2/3 cups granulated sugar
1 cup vegetable oil
1 15 oz. can pure pumpkin
2 cups sifted all-purpose flour
2 tsp. baking powder
2 tsp. ground cinnamon
1 tsp. salt
1 tsp. baking soda

Preheat oven to 350ºF. Using an electric mixer at medium speed, combine the eggs, sugar, oil and pumpkin until light and fluffy. In a medium bowl, stir together the flour, baking powder, cinnamon, salt and baking soda. Add the dry ingredients to the pumpkin mixture and mix at low speed until thoroughly combined, and batter is smooth. Spread the batter into a greased 13 x 9" baking dish. Bake for 35 minutes. Let cool completely before frosting.


Frosting:
1 8 oz. package cream cheese, softened
½ cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, softened
1/8 tsp. salt
3¾ cups sifted confectioners' sugar
½ teaspoon vanilla extract

Cream the butter, cheese and salt with an electric mixer until light and fluffy. Add sugar gradually until smooth. Add vanilla extract and mix until incorporated. Spread onto cooled cake.

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Red Velvet

Gahh...so lazy. I want to sleep. I should've gone to bed early last night, but after watching Late Night with David Letterman, I decided to do some beading. Why was I beading after 1:00 in the morning? I don't know. I haven't beaded in over a month, so I just felt like it last night.

Tomorrow is a coworker's birthday. We wanted to have some treats for him today, so I baked red velvet cupcakes with cream cheese frosting. I had one for breakfast this morning, and now I feel quite sluggish.

©2007 Yuzu Eats

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Putting a Birthday Gift to Good Use

Yuzu is Listening To Hannah Montana 2: Meet Miley Cyrus Hannah Montana/Miley Cyrus see related

Okay, so I've been lazy with updating my food blog. I really don't want to be on the Internet that much because I'm being very careful not to accidentally read Harry Potter spoilers (past experience has taught me that these spoilers can show up anywhere, even non-HP sites). *nerd alert* With the book release only two weeks away (whoa!), there are bound to be some dumbasses who feel like spoiling the fun for us fans. So my visits to the Internets will probably be sparse very soon.

Anyway...it was my birthday last week, and I have been pretty much eating a lot of sweets — specifically cupcakes (although I've had some slices of cheesecake and mochi ice cream here and there). Independence day was two days ago, and I'd originally planned on baking some patriotic cupcakes with red, white and blue stars and sprinkles — but I didn't have any of those things in my pantry. ;P I ended up baking these instead.

Chocolate cupcakes with pink strawberry frosting and chocolate jimmies


I transported them in one of my new cupcake carriers from Crate & Barrel

©2007 Yuzu Eats

The cupcake carriers were a gift from my parents and my sister, who demanded, "Now bake some cupcakes!" It didn't take me long before I put one of the carriers to use. Each one holds 2 dozen cupcakes. The second carrier will come in handy for those rare occasions when I'll bake some cupcakes to bring to the office.

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Twisty Bread

Yuzu is Watching Little Miss Sunshine see related

I apologize for neglecting this blog in the past several weeks. I caught a cold bug a couple weeks ago that left me at home for a whole week, unable to go to work or do anything really productive. If you've stayed at home for days, you know how boring it can get. Since I was not feeling up to sitting in front of the computer reading blogs or posting on blogs, I used whatever time I wasn't sleeping or watching TV to cook & bake! I made muffins, a couple of pizzas and these garlic twisty breadsticks.

I've found that making bread is very therapeutic. There are few things that can bring me the joy that beating a ball of dough with my fist can bring. And when the dough doubles in size while resting — ooh, that's so exciting! Using a rolling pin is pretty fun too.

©2007 Yuzu Eats

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Best Yuzu Sugar Cookies Ever

Yuzu is Watching The Office - The Complete Collection BBC Edition (First and Second Series Plus Special) see related

I've only baked a few desserts so far with yuzus, but this is my favorite thus far. My mom wanted me to bake cookies yesterday, so I searched for a recipe that called for ingredients my parents had in their pantry. ;) I also had a couple yuzus from my yuzu tree that I wanted to use, and I was able to incorporate them into a recipe to make sugar cookies with a nice citrus flavor.

©2007 Yuzu Eats

I'm very happy the way these cookies turned out, because they weren't too sweet, and the yuzu flavor wasn't overpowering the cookie. The cookies are moist & chewy, with crispy edges. My parents liked them a lot, so that spells success to me! Here's the recipe for anyone who wants to try these out. You can substitute lemon for yuzu, as I know how difficult it is to have actual yuzus on hand.

Best Yuzu Sugar Cookies Ever
3½ cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp. baking soda
¼ tsp. salt
1 3/4 cups granulated sugar, plus more for sprinkling
¼ cup light-brown sugar, packed
zest of 2 yuzus (approx. 1 tbsp.)
2 sticks unsalted butter, softened
2 large eggs
1 tbsp. freshly squeezed yuzu juice

Preheat oven to 350ºF. Sift flour, baking soda and salt in a medium bowl. Using a freestanding mixer fitted with paddle attachment, mix sugar, brown sugar and zest. Add butter until mixture is light & fluffy. Add the eggs, one at a time, and then the yuzu juice. Slowly add the flour mixture until a soft dough forms. Scoop 1½" balls of dough onto baking sheet. Flatten the balls slightly with the palm of your hand, and sprinkle a bit of granulated sugar on top. Bake for 15 minutes. Remove from the oven and let them sit for about a minute. Then move cookies to cooling rack.

Makes 30 cookies, 3" (7½ cm) in diameter.

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Pepper-Parmesan Bread

Yuzu is Watching Pride & Prejudice see related

I was home all weekend, recovering from my cold last week. I knitted, tried to get back into crochet again, and watched some movies on the telly. Amidst all the DVD- and movie-watching (I watched the entire BBC series of The Office on DVD, plus some movies on AMC, VH1 and Disney Channel), I decided to bake some bread and make the house smell delicious. I read an easy recipe in Los Angeles Times last week for a pepper-parmesan bread. I ♥ pepper (and cheese, for that matter), so I tried out this bread to see how it'd turn out.

©2007 Yuzu Eats

The obligatory in-the-oven photo


Look at the nice texture and golden color

I used a peppercorn medley (black, green, white and pink peppercorns) instead of just the plain black ones. Some people might find the pepper taste in this bread too strong, but I think it had a nice kick to it. If you want, you could probably lessen the amount of pepper if you want a more subtle taste.

Pepper-Parmesan Bread (from Los Angeles Times)
2 tbsp. melted butter
2 cups flour
1 tbsp. sugar
1 tbsp. baking powder
1 tsp. kosher salt
1 tbsp. plus 1 tsp. freshly ground pepper
1 cup freshly grated Parmigiano-Reggiano
2 large eggs
1 cup whole milk

Preheat oven to 350ºF degrees. Butter 9” x 5” loaf pan and set aside. In a large bowl, combine the flour, sugar, baking powder, salt and pepper, and mix with a whisk until thoroughly combined; make sure the pepper is well distributed. Stir in the cheese. In another bowl, combine the eggs, milk and melted butter, and mix lightly. Pour into the bowl with the dry ingredients and cheese. Mix with a rubber spatula until all the ingredients are well moistened. Scrape the dough into the prepared pan and bake for 1 hour, or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean. Cool slightly before turning out of the pan.

Slice it up and spread some butter on that baby!

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Finally a Christmas Update

Yuzu is Listening To Welcome To Ralph's World Ralph Covert see related

I hope everyone had a good holiday break. I enjoyed a nice week and a half off, relaxing with family, eating nonstop and sleeping in really late. I meant to update my journal right after Christmas so I can show you what I baked over the holidays, but I took a break from blogging last week. So I'm posting my Christmas goodies now.

©2007 Yuzu Eats

These were actually chocolate cookies, not gingerbread


Green Christmas tree sugar cookies


Butter yellow cupcakes with vanilla frosting and festive sprinkles


These cupcakes were made with Pillsbury cake mix
which came with Christmas-colored candy bits


I covered them in Pillsbury vanilla frosting topped with fun Christmas shapes

I think I've had enough sweets in the past couple of weeks to last me all through January. But that doesn't mean I won't have an ice-cream cone or a few cookies here and there. ;) Happy new year, everyone!

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The Yuzu Tree Giveth

Yuzu is Watching The Da Vinci Code see related

My blog has been lacking in posts lately because (a) I was on vacation in Chicago for a while, and (b) I've been bitten by a cold bug that's left me too lazy to post anything in the last week. But I return with a yummy yuzu entry! My yuzu tree has been blooming ever so wonderfully, and I picked one of its fruits to make a citrusy dessert which I brought to Thanksgiving dinner a couple weeks ago.

©2006 Yuzu Eats

I took a simple lemon bar recipe and tweaked it so they'd yield yuzu bars instead. I'm not really a fan of lemon bars, because they taste too eggy to me. But I know other people love lemon bars, so I baked these for them. ♥ This recipe will produce yuzu bars that burst with a lot of citrus flavor. If you prefer a more subtle citrus taste, switch all the 'yuzu' parts in the recipe with lemon and decrease the amount of lemon juice to 6 teaspoons.

Yuzu Bars
Crust:
1 cup unsalted butter, softened
½ cup confectioners' sugar
2 cups flour
pinch of salt

Preheat oven to 350ºF. Combine ingredients and mix well. Press mixture in 9" x 13" greased glass pan. Bake for 15 minutes or until lightly browned.

Filling:
4 eggs, beaten
1/4 cup flour
2 cups granulated sugar
7 tsp. yuzu juice (bottled yuzu juice will suffice as well)
zest of 1 yuzu

Combine flour and sugar; mix in beaten eggs, yuzu juice and zest. Pour onto slightly cooled crust. Bake at 350°F for 25 minutes or until filling is set. Cool and sprinkle with confectioners' sugar.

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Tartaruga Mozzarella

©2006 Yuzu Eats

I'm really digging turtle bread lately. So I made more! Baking bread is so fun and rewarding. Of course it can be a bit time-consuming (especially when making cool-shaped breads), but it's definitely worth it.

Last week I baked one plain, large turtle bread. This time around, I baked four little Italian turtle breads seasoned with fresh garlic, dried herbs and filled with yummy cheese. These are the same as the mozzarella balls I posted last time, but they're bigger and shaped like turtles.

The dough already smelled yummy while it was resting (all thanks to the garlic).


I ♥ fresh mozzarella cheese!


I think the turtles look their cutest when they're puffing up in the oven. :)


Nice & golden! And still cute.


My bread turtles like resting on fresh herbs.


And, of course, you gotta see the inside — melted, gooey mozzarella.

These turtles are a lot smaller than the turtle bread I baked last week. They ended up being 5½" (14 cm) from head to tail and 2½" (6½ cm) high. So cute! They're really tasty when you tear pieces off and dip them in marinara sauce — yum!

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Bread Balls Stuffed w/Cheese

I baked bread again over the weekend. I never thought baking bread would be addicting, but it's starting to become an obsession for me.

I wanted to bake a snack bread for my family to eat in between lunch and dinner. 'Cause a few hours after lunch passes, everyone's hungry. I decided to make little balls stuffed with fresh mozzarella.

©2006 Yuzu Eats

The dough getting baked in the oven

These are really easy to make, and they take about an hour from start to finish. Here's the recipe that I came up with.

Mozzarella Balls
2½ cups all-purpose flour
1 package active dry yeast
1 tsp. sugar
1 tsp. kosher salt
½ cup warm water
1/3 cup warm milk
1½ tbsp. butter or margarine
1 generous tsp. minced garlic
1 tsp. dried basil
½ tsp. dried thyme
1 egg
2 tbsp. jarred tomato sauce
1/3 cup fresh mozzarella, chopped into ½" cubes

In a medium bowl, dissolve yeast in warm water (105°F to 115°F). Stir in sugar, salt, warm milk, melted butter and 1½ cups of the flour. Add the basil, thyme and garlic, and incorporate. Stir in the egg. Then stir in the remaining cup of flour.

On a lightly floured cutting board or countertop, knead the dough for 5 minutes until it's smooth. Cover and let rest for 10 minutes.

Preheat the oven to 400°F. Lightly grease a baking sheet with cooking spray. Split the dough into 16 even sections. Do all of the following steps for each section: (1) flatten dough with your hands to make sort of like a mini pizza dough ; (2) put a drop of tomato sauce in the center of the flattened dough and spread it around (be careful not to let it spread to the edges, though); (3) place a few mozzarella cubes in the center; (4) then fold the edges of the flattened dough circle over the center to hold the cheese inside, and pinch it shut.

Place all 16 balls onto the baking sheet (pinched side down), about 2 inches apart. Brush all over with melted butter and pop them in the oven. Bake for approximately 25 minutes (could be slightly less, depending on your oven), or until golden brown.

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