Risibisi + a glimpse of downtown Petaluma

Our French inspired hotel was quite cute and we were fortunate enough to have a spacious second floor room.  The weather by this time, had become quite gray and overcast with a bit of a chill and even some light sprinkles.

We drove to downtown Petaluma, recognizing the clock tower, the Lan Mart store as well as their other historic buildings (thanks to rewatching "American Graffiti" a week prior)...


Dinner would be downtown at an Italian place...

New Year's Eve dinner + a new dessert, Raspberry Pecan Blondies

This was another Christmas gift that I was happy to receive...

(Thank you D!)

The design is pure genious...every piece has at least two  edges!

Assorted food gifts...or why it's great to have food bloggers as friends!

This post detailing food or food related gifts is a little late but better late than never I say.

t's always nice getting unexpected treats like these, from the always charming Jenny of Jenny Wenny Cakes whom I met up with before Christmas time...

Trader Joe's Kouign Amann

Several weeks ago I got a text from Cathy from Mmm-Yoso that told me to get my @$$ over to Trader Joe's....like NOW! (Okay, she didn't write @$$ but the message was urgent)...that I had to get these...

which, as you can see, I did. Thrice...

I'd only heard about this pastry from several other food bloggers (posts linked at the end) and thought I'd give Trader Joe's version a try...

Rainbow cupcakes

While the Brown Sugar Pie was baking, TC started up on another recipe...

She liked the rainbow cupcake we had at Love Cupcake Cafe so she thought she would try making her own...

Blueberry Mochi Cake

Can you believe it's 2013 already!

With a bit of sweet rice flour on hand, I thought I'd made a dessert to bring to my parents for the family get together...

A few more gifts...

Just a few more holiday posts til the year is done...

2013 is only six hours away...

Recent gifts...

One of the gifts I received from Kirbie yesterday lay in this bag...

My heart started racing when I peeked into the Christmas bag...could it be?

Chocolate Mochi revisited

Bert does all the dirty work...

I bake 'em and he cuts 'em...

Magic 7-Layer Bars

I shit you not. That is actually the name of these bars...

(Bert doing the dirty work for me; he's much more precise with the cutting)

Just how "magical" are these bars?

Cookies made by Child Labor

Last week I wanted to "warm myself" up for the holiday baking season.

I know the bowl's contents don't really look that appetizing, but hey! There are only four ingredients!

Using Child Labor...

A few days ago we had TC's friends, the Neighbor Girls over. The goal? To try a few recipes from Kirbie's blog. This was the salad their mom brought over (lettuce, cucumber, carrots, mushrooms and garbanzos with a no-salt seasoning and maple syrup/lemon/balsamic dressing)...

The girls were excited because TC asked them specifically to bring over two empty mugs...

Chocolate Cupcakes from scratch - kinda FAIL

TC wanted to bake something tonight so after getting our fish and squid from JNC, we headed on home to whip up some cupcakes. This time it would be different. And by different, I mean, NOT FROM A BOX.

I've never made cupcakes from scratch before (I know, blasphemy for those of you that are baking aficionados out there) so I had to do a quick search on the laptop. This was the first recipe I saw so here goes:

Chocolate Cupcakes
(recipe from allrecipes.com)

Ingredients:
1 1/3 cups all-purpose flour
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
2 teaspoons baking powder
3/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1/8 teaspoon salt
3 tablespoons butter, softened
1 1/2 cups white sugar
2 eggs
3/4 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup milk

Directions:
1.Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Line a muffin pan with paper or foil liners. Sift together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, cocoa and salt. Set aside. (I had TC do all this and I didn't sift it - I just dumped it all in and had her whisk it)

2.In a large bowl, cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add the eggs one at a time, beating well with each addition, then stir in the vanilla. Add the flour mixture alternately with the milk; beat well. Fill the muffin cups 3/4 full. (TC enjoyed cracking the eggs and adding in the vanilla, flour and milk while I did the mixing)

3.Bake for 15 to 17 minutes in the preheated oven, or until a toothpick inserted into the cake comes out clean. Frost with your favorite frosting when cool.

The recipe made about  1 dozen of the regular size and 1 1 /2 dozen of the smaller size. I also added some Ghirardhelli dark chocolate chips to the bigger sized batch. I don't know WTF I did wrong but they came out of the oven all nice and puffed up, then....POOF. They deflated quicker than an old man's limp...okay, I'll stopt here. It was almost comical to see but I was a bit dejected because I thought this would be a fool proof recipe. Whenever I've made cupcakes from a mix, I've never had problems and then I get these souffle looking things that collapsed upon itself like a black hole.

I ended up putting them back in the oven for a few more minutes. I think my mistake early on was adding the chocolate chips. They are bigger than regular chips and they probably weighed down the batter, making it a bit too wet and fudgy.

Since we were making cupcakes from scratch, I figured we'd do the frosting from scratch too. That's pretty uncomplicated...

Cream Cheese Frosting:

Ingredients:
1 8 oz package cream cheese, softened

1/4 cup butter, softened (1/2 stick)
2 cups sifted confectioners' sugar
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

Directions:
1.In a medium bowl, cream together the cream cheese and butter until creamy. Mix in the vanilla, then gradually stir in the confectioners' sugar. Store in the refrigerator after use.

Pretty easy and it tastes better than the canned frosting.
 
I don't have any photos of the frosted cupcakes. TC frosted the mini ones and smashed some Skittles into wierd pieces then gave it to her friends across the street (the neighbor sisters). Kind of a strange topping if you ask me, but they love candy in any shape or form it seems.

The next day, I tried one of the bigger cupcakes and while they were good, they were waay too sweet. So maybe I should have held off on those chips.

On a totally different note, here's a preview of True Blood Season 4 featuring my favorite Swedish manmeat, Alexander Skarsgard:

If it follows Book 4 of the series, then I only hope we get to see his character in tight pink spandex.

Chocolate Mochi with Chocolate Chips

The same day I made the Wanna Be Red Lobster Cheese biscuits, I also made Chocolate Mochi (but I added Chocolate Chips). I've made this plain before but didn't blog it. It's such a pain in the ass to blog the process of making something so I've made it easier (on myself) to just show the ingredients, the recipe, and the before and after pix (if any).

I got this recipe from Kirbie's Cravings (plain Chocolate Mochi). Here's the link to her recipe plus better photos from her blog..

Chocolate Mochi

(The sugar is MIA...)

Ingredients:
1 cup butter, melted
2 tsp. vanilla
2 cups sugar
4 eggs, beaten
2 tsp. baking powder
16 oz. box Mochiko flour
1 cup dutch processed cocoa or regular unsweetened cocoa powder
1 (12 ounce) can evaporated milk
3/4 cup coconut milk (I fkd up here because I did not shake the can of coconut milk so I actually poured in the cream that had risen to the top - it looked all curdled and shit when I added it in and mixed it but it still came out all right)

***TOTALLY OPTIONAL: I added Ghirardelli dark chocolate chips on top of the batter. For fun, I asked TC to poke them into the batter using toothpicks which she happily agreed to do. She also got the fun job of cracking and beating the four eggs.Hey, anything to get the kid excited about baking, right?  

Directions:

1. Preheat over to 350 F. Cream the butter with sugar.

2. Beat in the evaporated milk and coconut milk to the butter/sugar mixture.

3. Beat eggs into the mixture.

4. Beat in the rice flour, cocoa powder, baking powder and vanilla.

5. Pour batter into a 9x 11 pan.

6. Bake in oven for one hour, until an inserted toothpick comes out clean.

7. Cool completely before serving.

Hey you can see the cheese biscuits there! Bert found one of his Star Wars set Pez (the Death Star) in the pantry (along with an old Chococat and Easter Bunny).  The rest of the set is scattered around the house or in our office. When TC was a wee toddler, she used to draw Darth Vader, the Death Star and the Imperial Walkers. That's what you get when you have pop culture geeks for parents.

The color is all wierd here but here's a corner piece. I cut it diagonally then put it back together for this photo. I like how the mochi makes this chewy. Unfortunately some of my co-workers did not like it. Their loss. It was the chewiness that turned off one of them. But then, he's white and doesn't really like Asian stuff.

I saved all the edges for us and gave away the middle pieces to our neighbors and to a few co-workers. Damn, I'm selfish aren't I, saving the edges. Don't even think about getting a corner from me. I liked the addition of the dark chocolate chips in here. It was like biting into a hidden treasure. I should put more next time!

Wanna be Red Lobster Cheese Biscuits

Since I went to Red Lobster last week, I had a craving for their fk awesome cheese biscuits.

 I looked at different recipes online and they were pretty similar.

Sour Cream, Cheddar, and Chive Biscuits
(recipe from the blog Pinch My Salt)

Ingredients:

• 2 C. Bisquick
• 1/2 – 3/4 C. shredded cheddar cheese (I used 3/4 cup)
• 2 T. snipped fresh chives (I didn't really measure - I just snipped away until it looked green enough)
• 1/3 C. sour cream
• 1/3 C. milk

Garlic Butter (optional): (I was too lazy to do this but this was my big mistake. I think the garlic butter was definitely the key to making the biscuits taste better. They were fine out of the oven, but dry the next day. The garlic butter would have helped)

 In small saucepan melt 2 T. butter over low heat. Crush one small clove of garlic and add to the butter. Cook for a couple of minutes and then turn off heat. Brush biscuits with garlic butter as soon as they come out of the oven.

Here's my unbaked biscuit. I used a vintage biscuit cutter stolen borrowed and never to be returned taken brought home courtesy of the US Navy (Thanks Dad!).

Directions:

•  Preheat oven to 450 degrees.
• In bowl, mix together dry biscuit mix, cheese and chives.
• Blend milk and sour cream together in measuring cup then pour into dry mixture.
• Mix with spoon until just combined (do not overmix!).
• Sprinkle counter with some extra Bisquick and dump mixture onto counter.
• Knead gently a few times until everything is fairly well incorporated.
• At this point more Bisquick can be added if dough is too moist to work with.
• Pat out to 1/2 thickness and cut into biscuits (whatever size or shape you want).
• Place on ungreased baking sheet.
• Bake for about 8 – 10 minutes until golden.  
• Brush with garlic butter (optional), place on rack to cool for a couple minutes then eat while warm.

These made about 6-8 regular sized ones. I made two batches.

Oh yeah, look at the golden brown tops...YOu can see which ones were the nice big ones and which ones were the MUTANTS.  Martha Stewart I'm not.

They were pretty good for my first try.

Next time, I'll make the garlic butter...

Oh yuk, you can see how dry my skin is on my thumb. Nice going there.  But hey now, those biscuits were pretty tasty!

The other variations I saw online had garlic powder and more Bisquick. Man, I haven't bought Bisquick in years. My dad used to make pancakes every weekend using Bisquick. One of my friends, Robsessed, makes puto (white rice cake) with it as well.

I think I want to find a recipe that makes these from scratch instead of using Bisquick because it has that wierd Bisquicky flavor to it - kind of fluffy and dry and not as moist as it could be. But still, for a first try, not bad at all.