A conversation

If I could have a face-to-face conversation with my readers, I think it would go something like this:

Reader: Hey sarah the baker yoon.
Sarah the baker yoon: Hey! Actually, you can just call me Sarah.
R: Oh okay, Sarah. Hey so, how come you haven't been posting much lately?
SBY: Ah, well, you see. I've been very busy.
R: Yeah, but you were busy before too, yet you still squeezed in some time for baking. How come not any more?
SBY: Well before, my busy-ness was more of a stress thing... I still had time after class and in between my assignments. Plus I really needed to bake in order to get away from it sometimes.
R: And now..?
SBY: Oh, haven't I told you?
R: What?
SBY: I'm working now!
R: WHAT? REALLY?
SBY: Well, interning. It's a 9 to 5 job at a fantastic design studio downtown Toronto.
R: Oh wow. That's awesome. You were really looking forward to jump starting your graphic design career after you graduated!
SBY:: Yes, I did, didn't I? Well...
R: Well, what?
SBY: Well it's been awesome and I really enjoy going to work and meeting cool people and doing cool stuff, but...
R: But what?
SBY: I miss being a kid.
R: ...
SBY: I mean, growing up is awesome. And I really want to. But what about the wonderful days of childhood and not having to worry about making money and impressing your boss and trying to get rid of bags under your eyes?
R: It's just the way of life, my friend.
SBY: Yeah... and I know it's not all bad. It's great to get somewhere and meet people and really hone my talents and skills. Becoming someone and the journey of it. C'est merveilleux, non?
R: Say what?
SBY: "It's wonderful, no?"
R: Right.
SBY: Anyways. Yeah. That's what I've been up to! And so after a long commute, I'm basically pooped for the day. So I've sorta ditched my kitchenaid for a while.
R: That sucks.. so no baking for a while, I suppose?
SBY: Well, actually I have a huge order coming soon! It's for a wedding, and I'm baking the cupcake favors. I'm really excited about that, actually!!
R: Oh! Good luck, Sarah!
SBY: Thanks!
R: =)
SBY: Okay well.. I think we should end our conversation now. I bet the other readers are getting bored.
R: Right.
SBY: Right. Oh, but I won't leave them high and dry with no photos! I know we all love photos. These are from a few weeks back when I was a bum, and got to meet my family friends, including my most favorite kids ever. I got lucky enough to take some photos of them playing. And these kids honestly make my heart sing. They really are the most precious little kids in the WORLD WIDE WORLD!!!!!!
R: ...
SBY: Yeah. I like them a lot. Anyways, thanks for coming by! I'm always here for some conversation. :)









Do you have any questions for me? I'd love to talk to you! :D

Less-words Tuesdays: Kimbap

AHa! Get it? Since I really suck at "Wordless Tuesdays", I am instead creating a "Less-Words Tuesday". Muhaahah. I can still leak a few words here and there without being a loser! ..Or did I just validate that by creating a nonsensical phrase? Oh well! You still love me, right? Anyways, here's a post on one of my favorite lunches in the whole world, the kimbap.


sauteed fish cakes, aka o-deng or uh-mook in Korean


different ingredients, or "stuffings"





my mom's beautiful kimbap rolling

Kimbap is almost like the Japanese maki, except it's Korean and you don't put raw seafood into it. Well there's slightly more to that, too. The flavor is quite different, generally uses more ingredients and the shape is often fatter and shorter than its' Japanese cousin. You can always make a fusion Kimbap or Roll too! Koreans are so creative with their ingredients and there are some really wild and non-traditional ones out there! My favorite ones are cheese, tuna salad, pork cutlets, kimchi, and corn, although never all together. :P




I love kimbap because it's tasty, bite-sized, and healthy, but mainly because it brings me good memories of childhood. In Korea, Kimbap is the staple food that kids take to school field days or trips. I remember those exciting but smoldering summer days where hundreds of kids would sit on the floor with their frozen bottled water and little plastic lunch boxes. We would all open our korean-style tupperware with our perfect rolls that our mothers have lovingly packed. I loved those days. So I eat my kimbap with much nostalgia and sentiment.

Short Order

Not exactly short order, these cupcakes were done on short notice! For a special birthday party of a one month old baby. How cute is that. These cupcakes turned out more grown-up looking than a baby party, but I figured it'd be mostly adults attending the party, no? Ah.. Maybe not. The decoration was up to me, so I just stuck with what I thought was pretty. I am a gourmet cupcake maker, after all. Ya right!



The first cupcake you see here is the Chocoholic. It's a dark chocolate cake (my indispensable black magic cake) and dark chocolate frosting (martha stewart's recipe) with milk chocolate shavings. It's very very chocolatey. The second cupcake you see below is the van ♥ choc. A soft vanilla cake (Magnolia's) embracing a huge hunk of milk chocolate ganache frosting.




By the way, I made labels for my cupcake boxes!! I was thinking of doing this a whilllle back, but never got around to it. And as I was scrounging around my room for some sticky paper, I found translucent printable label stickers. How Perfect. They looks so groovy with the brown boxes. The photo doesn't do justice, though, you gotta see em in person how pretty they look. I'm so cool. Cmon now, give it to me! Heehee just playing around with you! :P




Alrighty. This was a short one. Hope you enjoyed it! All the necessary recipes are linked up there, so please follow accordingly! :) Have a fantastic day, everyone! (Okay, I was going to end it here, but I took so many photos of my cupcakes, and I want to show them all! Hope you don't mind!)

It's not easy being sweet.

This pound cake really doesn't need a fancy back story or long prelude. But I'll do it anyway 'cause it's a darn good pound cake that will please the hardest to please: my daddy. My dad is a great supporter of my baking and is always proud to tell people about my blog, but to be honest, he doesn't really like my baked goods that much. He's a snacker for sure -- he's always nibbling on peanuts and cashews while he watches tv, he's got after eights in the car, and popcorn is a must for movies. But he doesn't like the really sweet stuff like cupcakes and cookies. He's also got some diabetes going on so he really shouldn't be eating that stuff anyway.



So it's usually my dad reminding me how sweet all my baked goods are and that I should really consider making it less sweet. Slightly exasperated, I just tell him that it's how the recipe is, and that they are just supposed to be that way! Plus I'm afraid that it will dramatically change the outcome if I cut down on the sugar too much. So, that's how it is. Period. Unless you find a perfect green tea pound cake recipe, of course!!



My dad's friends were coming over for tea yesterday evening, so I thought I would delight them with a homebaked treat! I wanted use my expensive matcha powder I got a while back so I looked around for a good recipe that uses it. Alas, I found my green tea pound cake recipe from crummb and was definitely convinced at her words "it is moist, tender and – very important to Asian tastebuds – not too sweet." YES!! I found it!



It really is that. It's moist, tender, and not too sweet. It's perfect. The startling green color is beautiful (although I think the crust's brownish color is kind of ugly and sorta reminds me of the HULK). I gave a piece to my grandmother and she went on and on about how she doesn't usually like cake but this was just the most delicious thing she's ever eaten. She told me how she kept coming downstairs for more. And that's saying A LOT for my grandma. My dad also praised the pound cake in front of his friends and how it's so tasty, but "not to sweet". Hahaha!

Anyways, this really is a long intro to the cake, but maybe it'll convince you to try it as well. The recipe is by Nick Malgieri who wrote "the modern baker". It's slightly more complicated than a typical pound cake because you need to separate the eggs and beat the egg whites and fold it in later. But it's really not that hard, and if I did it, you can too. And I love love my second-hand-store mini loaf pans so I used them instead of the standard 9 by 5 pan. Enjoy!

Green Tea Pound Cake

makes one 9x5 loaf or two mini loaves
recipe from Fountain of Life Green Tea Company

ingredients

2 cups bleached all-purpose four
2 tablespoons Matcha green tea
2 teaspoons baking powder
2 sticks soft unsalted butter
2 cups confectioners' sugar
5 large eggs, separated
Pinch of salt

directions

1. Butter a 9 x 5 x 3-inch loaf pan and line with buttered parchment or wax paper—cut to fit. Set a rack in the middle level of the oven and preheat to 325F. Combine the flour, green tea and baking powder and stir well to mix.
2. Cream butter and confectioners sugar in bowl of mixer with paddle attachment and beat for about 3 minutes or until light. Beat in the egg yolks one at a time, beating well after each addition and scraping bowl and beater occasionally with a rubber spatula. Remove the bowl from the mixer and fold in the flour mixture by hand, with a rubber spatula.
3. Pour the egg whites and salt into a clean, dry mixer bowl. Place on mixer with whisk attachment and whip whites on medium speed until white and opaque and just beginning to hold their shape. Increase speed slightly and continue whipping egg whites until they hold a soft peak.
4. Remove bowl from mixer and quickly scrape whites from bowl onto batter in other bowl. Use a large rubber spatula to fold the egg whites into the batter, folding just until no streaks of white remain.
5. Scrape the batter into prepared pans and smooth the top. Bake the cakes for about 45 minutes (35-40 minutes for mini loaf pans) or until it is well risen and a toothpick inserted in the center emerges dry. Cool the cakes in the pans on a rack for 10 minutes, then un-mold and cool it completely.

Third time's a charm

Hello, everyone. I made Special Brownies yesterday. No, not the ones that you find in a college dorm room or on the menu of Amsterdam's coffeeshops, but just real. good. brownies. I've been looking, searching, hunting for a good recipe, only to be left with flavorless or cakey imitations. But no longer will I chew on bland and insipid brownies. No longer will I swallow eggy cakes. I have found the BAKED brownie.



The Baked Bakery in NYC. I'm sure you've heard of them, if you're as "hip" as I am in the baking world. (Totally and utterly kidding about this. I am not hip, nor does one have to be in order to be a good baker.) Anyways. They really are a cool bakery, though. Their baked goodies not only get lots of raves about how delicious it is, their stuff just looks oh-so-stylish too. I really like their new cookbook and I'll probably be purchasing it real soon, but for now, I'm just going to be a super sneak and copy their recipe with a pen and paper at the book store.



Yes, I am a recipe thief. But you must understand that I've been really wanting a perfect brownie recipe, and the one in their book REALLY stood out. Maybe it was the way they described their own masterpiece, but it really convinced me! It uses both dark chocolate bars and dark cocoa powder, is almost a one-bowl recipe, and implements a strict "no-overbeat, no-overbake" rule. And when followed properly, you'll get the perfect brownie: dense, chocolatey, and moist.





The recipe follows a fairly easy procedure, but whenever they get all "DONT OVERBEAT!!" on me, I must admit I get a bit nervous. I've had cases where I underbeated things and the thing was a failure. How much beating is necessary? Luckily, this recipe is pretty descriptive and seems to make an effort to let you know when it is time to stop. First off, they divide the 5 eggs into two steps so that it's properly mixed in, they let you know when you should stop beating ("When the flour mixture is only slightly visible), and finally, the whole thing is done by hand. You don't need to bust out your handy hand-mixer or your trophy kitchenaid. Your hand and trusty whisk/spatula will do. :)



The result is one fantastic brownie. Lots of chocolate in there. Lots of moisture. Lots of real brownie-ness. I give it an A! (Why not the "+" in there? Ah... It's missing just ONE component that I truly desire in a brownie: chewy. It's not chewy. It's like melt-in-your-mouth soft and tender, but not chewy. We all know how important chewy is.) But I'm glad that after my third try, I can post up a proud brownie recipe here! Please! I recommend!





Okay okay. Now that we talked about wonderful recipes and baked goods up there. Can we just discuss about one thing? Prices. Costs. Expenses. Expensive. Is it just me or is baking taking quite a toll on the wallet? Phew. I don't know how y'all do it! I'm a big snob when it comes to baking ingredients--but not even, because I think all bakers know how important it is to get the best materials you can get your hands on! We can't settle on Baker's chocolate if I want to make great tasting brownies. We can't just buy cheapo butter for our butter cakes! So as I'm dishing out $18 on a chocolate bar and $6 for a block o' butter, I do sometimes wonder if what I'm doing is the smartest thing in the world. I've been looking online for deals on good chocolate, but shipping to Canada is always such a markup, let alone have shipping available to here. One thing that really kills me is when for cupcake orders, people ask for discounts. I know if I was in their position, I would probably look for ways to cut down on prices too, but really, as a private-at-home baker, it's really hard on me too! I'm not a big bakery where I get all my stuff in bulk and cheap, where I get lots of hands helping me either. It's just me! I get mt stuff retail mostly, cuz the bulk stores don't have the best ingredients sometimes, and when I say a price, I've calculated all that's gone in there. But I guess another good thing about my home "business" is that I can always say no too. :) Anywhooo. Lots and lots of rambling here. If you have any tips for me for purchasing ingredients or any personal opinions on rising butter prices, give me a shout!! I wanna hear from you!

the baked brownie

from the baked cookbook

ingredients

1 1/4 cups all purpose flour
1 tsp salt
2 tbsp dark unsweetened cocoa powder
11 oz dark chocolate coarsely chopped
2 sticks butter, cut into 1" pieces
1 tsp instant espresso powder
1 1/2 cups granulated sugar
1/2 cup firmly packed light brown sugar
5 large eggs, room temperature
2 tsp vanilla extract

directions

1. Preheat oven to 350F. Butter the sides and bottom of a glass or light colored metal 9x13x2 pan.
2. In a medium bowl, whisk flour, salt, and cocoa powder.
3. Put chocolate, butter, espresso powder in a heat resistant bowl over a pan with simmering water, but not bowl touching the water directly. Softly whisk until completely melted and smooth. Turn off heat, but keep bowl over the water and add sugars. Whisk until completely combined. Then remove bowl from pan. Bring the mixture to room temperature.
4. Add 3 eggs to the chocolate mix and whisk until combined. Add remaining eggs and whisk until combined. Add vanilla extract and stir until combined. Do not overbeat at this point, or the brownie will be cakey and stiff.
5. Sprinkle flour mix into the chocolate mix. Using a spatlua, fold the flour mix until just a bit of flour is visible.
6. Pour batter evenly onto the pan and smooth the top. Bake in center of the oven for 30 minutes. Rotate pan halfway through the time until toothpick comes out with a few moist crumbs. Don't overbake and check consistently. They say "an overbaked brownie is not a BAKED brownie". Cool completely to serve.
The brownie can be kept airtight at room temperature for up to 3 days.

Baked Note: A great brownie is easy to make, but you have to be aware of several factors. 1. Use a dark cocoa powder, like Valrhona. A pale, light-colored cocoa does not have enough depth. 2. Make sure your eggs are room temperature and do not overbeat them into the batter, and 3. Make sure you check your brownies often while baking. Once the brownies have been overbaked slightly, they have reached the point of no return.