akinoame: (Stitch)
So I made the Waldorf-Astoria's red velvet cake, albeit as cupcakes and with a slight change to the icing.

Results: Very moist cake, delicious, but decidedly not red, even with the 1 tsp of red food coloring it calls for. It just ends up being an incredibly dark-colored chocolate. Which is still delicious. I recommend just foregoing the food coloring and making this as a chocolate cake. The 1 1/2 pounds of beets are easier to work with if you mash them before pureeing them (although I admit that I have a small food processor, so I had to use a blender; if you have a big food processor, you might have an easier time), and I was terrified when I just smelled beets and tasted them in the batter, but the odor and flavor are gone by the time it bakes.

My icing adjustment: I ended up using 16 ounces of mascarpone to 8 ounces of cream cheese, partly because I don't have an immediate use for 4 ounces of mascarpone and don't want to waste it, and partly because I'm honestly not the biggest fan of cream cheese anyway. This tastes fantastic and honestly better with a dark chocolate cake rather than a true red velvet, but my icing is very soft and needs to be refrigerated before I frost any of the cupcakes. Mind you, there are two other reasons why this might be the case: 1) whipping cream to "soft peaks" is just as unintelligible to me as "whip to Twin Peaks," so I might have under-whipped it; and 2) I live in Florida, which can be accurately described as "Where it's flat and immense / And the heat is intense / It's barbaric, but hey, it's home."

But yes. Delicious, but not red. Also added chocolate chips to the last batch of cupcakes since red velvet is this weird chocolate cake that does not taste like chocolate.

Crumb cake

Mar. 23rd, 2018 09:04 pm
akinoame: (Eiji: Loves me not)
Read more... )

Bonus! If you used up a vanilla bean... )
akinoame: (Aqua)
Optional preface )

Now, for the recipe:

Ingredients:

6 potatoes
3 roma tomatoes
3 green onions
1 cup shredded cheese
8oz media crema (milk cream/table cream--Nestle makes this as Media Crema--check with canned milk or baking aisles)
Color -- optional. I like to add in some season salt; this just adds a yellow color to it.
Oil -- your choice, just to keep from sticking in the pan

1. Boil the potatoes until they are soft.
2. In a pan, put the onions and tomato with a little bit of oil. Wait until it gets kind of juicy, then add the milk cream, cheese and color (KC: or seasoned salt).
3. Mix, then wait until the cheese melts.
4. When the potatoes are ready, drain from the water and put the sauce over it.
akinoame: (Default)
Food review today. If only because I got my kitkats in the mail today and tasted the ruby chocolate that everyone's going mad about.

So the box is extraordinarily pretty, with metallic elements to highlight the pink crystal design. Honestly, I probably would have been delighted just to buy the box--I need to figure out what stuff from my desk I can put in it when the candy is done!

So the one I ordered had a combination of flavors: two ruby, one milk, one "bitter" that I assume is dark chocolate (though I don't know how dark yet), and one white. Since I've tried all the other flavors (assuming the dark chocolate isn't darker than the kitkat available in America), I decided to jump right into it and taste the ruby first.

I've heard a lot of people say about ruby chocolate that it tastes like berries, and yeah, that's definitely the case. But it's not a specific berry taste, or a flavor like "Okay, this is just white chocolate with strawberry/raspberry flavor added." It's more like a mixed berry smoothie, with some white chocolate syrup added in, if that makes sense. There's a fruity tartness at the first bite, but because the chocolate is nice and creamy and sweet, it's mellow. And given I don't really like strawberry or raspberry flavor, I have to say this is really good. The smoothie comparison is the best thing I can think of to describe it. It takes care of a sweet craving, but also has a bit of fruitiness, like you were having juice or even wine with it.

I gave Mom and Dad a bite, but I'm not sure how into it they were. And I told my sister about the flavor, but she said she doesn't know if she'd like white chocolate in her berry smoothies. I'll definitely finish the bars, but I think this is more of a chocolate I'd want to cook with, making a pie or tart or whatever. It is good, but don't go insane and spend a whole lot of money trying to get these off ebay or whatever. I paid abou $25 on DeJapan, plus about another $20 for EMS shipping (because I live where it is already early summer in February, so I didn't want it to melt). Otherwise...honestly, yeah, you can wait till ruby chocolate is available in your country. It's good, but it's not something I'd recommend overpaying for.

Edit: Fixed the photo links. Also, no idea why looking at the lineup of flavors so long makes me think of the Timeranger/Time Force helmets.
akinoame: (Pumpkin)
So, backstory. My sister has a friend from France, and she raves about her potatoes--a gratin recipe totally unlike American au gratin potatoes. And being that my family is roughly half-Irish, we take potatoes seriously. Well, we take food in general seriously, but still.

The recipe her friend works off of is, obviously, entirely in French. So I had to run it through Google Translate, then run some conversions from metric to imperial, and finally just some good old fashioned trial and error.

This recipe will take a while to cook. I know I take forever with prep work, but even the recipe recommends about half an hour for that, then an hour to cook. And I freely admit that not all of the directions make sense.

This recipe is also cut in half from the original, if only because one of the main ingredients is really expensive in the U.S.: creme fraiche. If you're lucky enough to see it in your local stores for under $5, then awesome. Only Publix had it in their imported cheeses (despite this one being labeled domestic), other than Whole Foods, and the price was the same. I did see a recipe for creme fraiche, if you're adventurous enough to try it. But I also did the full recipe with only one 8 oz container of creme fraiche, and it still turned out pretty good, if a little milkier.

Ingredients )

Directions )

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akinoame: (Default)
Akino Ame

June 2025

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