Making Chocolate Pancakes with Chocolate Coconut Milk

I went to Lake Tahoe in May with my family for my grandma's birthday. On our last day, there was a biking race that my father and uncle wanted to check out so we all went to have a look. Apparently there was an Olympian biker there as well as Christine Armstrong? I got a few pictures of the front leaders but don't know who's who.

Anyways, getting to my point, while we were there, there were a ton of tents set up with companies advertising their products and giving away free promotional items. One of these places was So Delicious, a company that specializes in dairy free products including nut ice creams (cashew ice cream anyone? Their cappuccino one is actually really good and you can't taste the cashews at all) and coconut milk/ice cream. I actually got a free carton of chocolate coconut milk and so when I got home, I had to figure out what to do with it. Yes I could just drink it, but I'm not a huge juice/anything drinker (I like to stick with my water and tea) so I figured, might as well see if I can bake anything with it. I then came across this post which inspired me to try it out. The original recipe used Silk almond milk but I figured coconut milk wouldn't be any different and the pancakes turned out wonderful (albeit a little flat and not your typical fluffy pancake) and delicious.

The original recipe calls for:

• 1 cup Chocolate Silk Soymilk or Chocolate Milk
• 2 Tablespoons white vinegar
• 1 cup all-purpose flour
• 2 tablespoons white sugar
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• ½ teaspoon baking soda
• ½ teaspoon Kosher salt
• 1 egg
• 2 Tablespoons butter, melted
• Whipped cream for topping

I made a few changes (less butter and normal instead of Kosher salt) in addition to using the So Delicious chocolate coconut milk. For my next attempts, I plan to try using a substitute egg (flax seed + water) and/or whole wheat flour. I think it would be nice to also include chocolate chip bits in the actual pancake because you can never have too much chocolate!

Anyways hope you chocolate lovers give this a try and thank the original recipe maker! Hope you're all having a wonderful day!

The Art of Making French Macarons

I've been debating if I should make this post, given the plethora of macaron resources available on the web, but thought that, with the countless batches I've made, it wouldn't hurt to add my thoughts, tips, and suggestions that I haven't seen many people talk about. Therefore, this post may skim over the basics of making macarons but I will provide a list of all the posts I've read and found helpful in my journey to making macarons. Please note that I use the French macaron recipe, NOT the Italian version!

Note: I am in NO way an expert at making my macarons (oh how one can dream!) but I have made them enough times and watched enough videos to have learned what does and doesn't work [for me] and what, really, [imo] just doesn't matter. And if you learn anything from reading all this mumbo jumbo, it's that macarons may be finicky, they're very individual-tailored but you can still get away with variation in some places.

1. The Recipe
There are SO many different recipes for macarons and I really don't think it matters which one you use (so long as there are enough reviews saying it works). I've actually written down all the macaron recipes from the big name bloggers and compared their amounts of almond flour, granulated sugar, powdered sugar, and egg whites and yes they do vary (some more so than others) but I've tried them all and they've all created normal nice macarons. In general, the egg white amount is constant in recipes with the greatest variation in almond flour to powdered flour ratio. Granulated sugar is always less than powdered sugar and almond flour but I've found that the amount of granulated sugar doesn't make a huge difference to the success of your macarons. Most recipes call for more powdered sugar than almond flour; others call for equal amounts. I personally like the ones that call for an equal amount because I (assume) it means the macarons will be less sweet. If you go for a recipe that has a super high almond flour ratio though, your macarons will end up with a more cakey dense texture rather than the light fluffy one.
The recipe I am currently using is from Indulge with Mimi . I've halved it so that my ingredients are:

• 25 g egg white
• 22.5 g granulated/white sugar (I've lowered this to 20 g and had no issues with my macarons)
• 32.5 g powdered/confectioners' sugar
• 32.5 g almond flour

My scale doesn't go actually measure to the 0.1 g so I guestimate from there and it doesn't make or break my macarons (more evidence to support my hypothesis that macarons may not be as finicky as you think). I have also tried All Recipes recipe which (when divided by 4) called for:

• 25 g egg white
• 12.5 g granulated/white sugar (I usually used 7g actually without issues)
• 50 g powdered/confectioners' sugar
• 22.5 g almond flour 

What you hopefully can tell is that the top recipe calls for more granulated sugar and less powdered sugar. Some amount of the powdered sugar (about 10g) is also added to the amount of almond flour. So here are 2 quite difference recipes that both gave me fine results. Both have given me batches that didn't work out also but I blame other external factors (ie. myself or the humidity).

2) Batch amounts
I highly recommend that you start with small batches of macarons if you are new to making macarons or experimenting with adding flavors (ie cocoa powder, green tea powder, etc). Even I still work in small batches (mostly because my silipat doesn't fit properly on my tray so I can't fill it up completely) because almond flour is quite expensive and I really don't want to be throwing away 60 macaron shells (aka two whole trays) if something went wrong. It is also recommended you only bake one batch of macarons at a time due to incomplete heating if you use two racks of your oven. I think if you're pro enough or know your oven well enough, you can try using two pans at once but I wouldn't advise it if starting out.

3) Macaron Baking Process
The general guidelines for macarons are simple:
1. Sift almond flour and powdered sugar
2. Beat egg whites to soft/medium firm/firm/stiff peaks (I will discuss this in a bit) - at some point of this beating process, you are supposed to add in your granulated sugar. When you do this honestly doesn't matter. Just sometime before it gets to the right peak stiffness (I add it in earlier than later. You can add it in all at once or break up the additions, I don't find that making a difference either but I think splitting it up is better to "not break the meringue").
3.Fold egg whites and almond flour+powdered sugar mixture together (aka MACARONAGE process)
4. Put into piping bag/plastic bag and pipe onto silicon mat or parchment paper
5. Bake at some temperature for some amount of time.

Now if you read this recipe, you might have lots of questions. Aren't macarons supposed to be very finicky? Why is there not one straight guideline on how to make them? Well that's because they are highly specific to the baker! What works for one person will not work for another. So let's slowly take apart this generalized recipe and go over the important and not so important parts.

1. Yes you need to sift your almond flour and powdered sugar. This gets rid of lumps. However, does this need to be the first step? I've decided: no not really. IF (and only if) your almond flour is very fine - usually meaning you didn't grind it up yourself - and you know it will sift through the strainer easily, you can directly sift the powdered sugar and almond flour into your bowl of beaten egg whites. However, because I previously would grind up my own slivered almonds to make almond flour, I know that making your own almond flour means it is a lot harder to sift and therefore takes more time. In those cases, I advise sifting before hand because waiting too long to incorporate your meringue and dry ingredients can cause issues (I have yet to run into those. Fingers crossed, knock on wood!)
2. I'm going to talk about aging your egg whites in the next section because I want to focus on the stiffness of your meringue here. Some recipes/videos call for medium firm peaks, others call for firm, and some call for stiff. I personally tend to err on the side of too stiff rather than too soft, but that's just me. I do this because I read you can beat the air out of the meringue that is stiffer but you can't really "add air" to a meringue that doesn't have enough (ie. one that only has soft or medium peaks). I've seen lots of videos where people use meringues with only medium peaks however and their macarons turned out beautifully though so what does that tell me? That either way is fine! Perhaps one is more reliable than the other (I choose to think that is the stiffer peaks method) but it's up to you to experiment and figure that out.

Credits to Betty Lou Crocker

In this image above, the most right photo is labeled as a "stiff peak." I, however, beg to differ. I believe that is more of a medium firm peak. A true stiff peak (one that I aim for) looks like the photo below (credits to acup4mycake). The "peaks" shouldn't fall over like in the previous photo. Do note that the size of your "glob" of meringue does affect whether or not the peak will stand up or not (aka if you get a bigger glob with a higher peak, it's more likely to fall over because of gravity). However, if in that same meringue batter, you can get a smaller peak that stands straight up, I think you're good to go.


3. Folding your macarons is something you just sort of watch videos to learn how to do and then do your best to imitate. I don't think counting how many folds you do is very helpful because different recipes = different amounts of batter = different amount of folds needed. I suggest watching every macaron folding video out there and choosing which folding technique you like best and working with it. Or just do a combo of them all. There's no one absolute way and as long as you don't OVER fold, you're good. I actually was so scared about over folding that I under-folded my macarons the first time and they came out all bumpy! If you are having issues with hollow macarons by the way, you're probably being like me and simply folding together the egg whites and dry ingredients and you need to actually 'deflate' the batter by smearing it on the bowl. This is kind of scary the first time around because everyone's always saying don't fold too much or else your batter will get runny and here you are just smooshing down this air-filled batter that you worked on so hard to maintain. I'm just going to leave you with one macaronage video that I learned from (you can tell I really like Indulge with Mimi; she has good resources). I basically try and fold under the batter and bring all the dry ingredients to the top and then use my spatula to scrape the edge of my ball of meringue so that some "wetness" from it can touch the dry ingredients. That probably doesn't make sense but I do that over and over and then when it's all combined, I start smearing my batter across the side of the bowl to "deflate" some of the air. Like I said, watch videos!
4. Oven Temperature
Everyone's oven is different. Some people say 285 F, others say 300 F, and some even say 350 F. I started at 305 F and had my macarons totally melt (feet spread outwards - a sign of too high oven temp) so I lowered it to 295 F. This was better but macarons still browned or were hollow if I took them out earlier so I came to 285 F. I have a feeling my oven runs on the hotter side (I don't use an internal oven thermometer but highly suggest you get one to ensure your oven temperature is true to what it says. They're quite cheap anyways ~$6-8). The temperature and timing is something you will have to play around with but I think starting at 300 F might be a good starting point. If your macarons brown or your feet spread outward, lower the temperature by 5-10 degrees next time. If no feet form, you need to increase your temperature. Timing wise can range from 10-20 minutes. I currently work with 16 minutes at 285 F but I put my oven temperature to 295-300 F when preheating and then lower it to 285 F when I put the macarons in. Not sure if this makes a huge difference but I like to think it prevents my oven from reheating due to loss of heat when I open the oven to put in the macarons. This is a good trick to try if your macarons seem to crack even though you are putting the oven at a relatively low temp and doing all other preventative measure (aka smacking them to get rid of air bubbles).

5. Aging Egg Whites?
This apparently is a much discussed topic and more often than not, people say to do this. This is because it does some funky stuff with the egg white proteins which will stabilize your meringue making it firm up and make those nice beautiful peaks. I assume this has something to do with denaturing the proteins and also drying out the egg white so it has less liquid. After consulting the various online macaron gurus, websites, and discussions, I've decided it doesn't matter if you age your egg whites or not but it doesn't hurt to either. I've only come across one recipe that specifically said to use fresh egg whites and I didn't try their recipe because, despite using the french macaron style, they said their macarons didn't need to be set on the counter for one hour. Crazy and I have no idea how that works but they definitely had nice looking macarons! Anyways, if you wish to age your egg whites, you can split the egg yolk and meringue 1-5 days before (after 5 days, your egg whites might go bad) and leave them in a container either in the fridge or counter top. I've never left mine on the counter top for fear something might go wrong with them (I live in America where we put our eggs in the fridge; I do know elsewhere people just leave their eggs out which is crazy to me but apparently is due to differences in the processing of the eggs? Who knows). I've heard that the container should have holes in it (ie. use saran wrap and poke some holes) but I'm not too fussed; like I said, aging your egg whites doesn't make or break your macarons. I've made macarons with aged and non-aged egg whites. If you're worried about your meringue not stabilizing (or you've had issues getting stiff peaks), you need to make sure your bowl is clean (wipe it down with vinegar or lemon juice if it's been used for other cooking adventures involving oil) and try adding a pinch of cream of tartar or salt right when you start beating your egg whites. I do find that my egg whites stiffen up more quickly when they're at room temperature so this IS one thing I recommend. If you're taking a egg right out of the fridge, put it in a cup or bowl of warm-hot water while you go measure out the rest of your ingredients (about 5 minutes). If you've already pre-split your egg white and yolk, just leave it on the counter for 20 minutes (but that usually is too long for me so I just go ahead and use it "cold").
6. Troubleshooting
Last but not least, here are a few things I don't think enough people talk about so I wanted to cover them here:
- Double stacking baking pans
I read about this a few times but didn't think it was a huge deal. I started with only one baking pan and had enough good macarons turning out in each batch to think that one baking pan was good enough (I usually had 2-4 out of 20 macaron shells that cracked). My baking sheets are (I assume) good quality ones also so I didn't think double stacking would help much. Plus who knew what adding a second pan would do to my baking time or temperature? But, when I had two completely failed batches of macarons (cracked shells) without any changes to my recipe or technique (well besides using parchment paper but that's not supposed to affect your macarons!), I decided to give it a go (what else did I have to lose?). The effect was significant and I'm disappointed I didn't start doing this sooner. Before double stacking my pans, my 2-4 cracked macarons were always piped in the same area so I assumed this was a "heat pocket" area of my oven. However, because double stacking baking sheets (aka using two baking pans instead of one) apparently conducts the heat better, this eliminates the issue of heat pockets. And sure enough, my batches since double stacking my pans have all had ZERO cracked macarons! Woohoo! So I am now a converted advocate of double stacking pans.

A batch of my beautiful no crack animal shaped macarons :)

- Wrinkly macaron shells
This happened to me once and I am still puzzled why. I was trying to make bear shaped macarons on parchment paper and it was raining outside (see next trouble shooting point on humidity). As you can see in the photos below, the macaron shell looks wrinkled like a thin sheet of paper (and there are cracks!). If you look carefully, the edges of the macarons (at the feet) are slightly browned meaning I baked them for too long. I've tried troubleshooting what might be the cause for this but it seems the general answer is you either took your macarons out of the oven too quickly or you didn't let a skin form. Now I made sure that a skin was formed on all my macarons before putting them in so unless humidity affects macarons in another way, I don't think it was the rain. However, when I checked my macarons at the 4-5 minute mark (total baking time 16 minutes at 285 F), they were cracking so I opened the door quite a bit before closing it quickly. I think this gust of cold air may have contributed to the macarons crinkling but I can't say for certain. So as you can see, I don't have a good answer for wrinkly macarons either but they don't seem to be a common thing so hopefully you don't find yourself in this dilemma. I'm leaning towards the answer being that my macarons cracked and wrinkled because I didn't tap them enough and that random gust of cold air. Perhaps the humidity made my skin that formed weak but I do recall that when I touched them, I was surprised by how firm they felt. If you have a better answer to why this happened, please leave a comment below!

-Weather/humidity/environment
Apparently this plays a pretty large role in making your macarons. If the area you live in is too wet or humid, the macarons will have a harder time drying, thus making it harder (if not impossible) to form a shell. This can be circumvented by running a range-hood fan (aka the fans above a stove) and/or using a fan on light speed to blow at the macarons gently to dry them. Now I've baked macarons twice in the rain and all my macarons in each batch cracked. However, I was also using parchment paper (vs a silicone mat which I normally use) and not double stacking my pans. I had also checked and there was definitely a skin formed so not 100% sure that the humidity was the factor or if it was something else. I have baked with parchment paper since then WITH double stacked pans in normal weather conditions and had 100% success rate so I'll leave it up to you to decide how large of a role weather plays.
- Overmixed or spread out badder
No one talks about how you can SAVE these but I've found a way (hoozah!). It's not entirely foolproof but works most of the time! If you know your macaron batter is too liquidy, start by piping REALLY tiny circles. They will spread so pipe less than you think is okay (I'd say maybe a dollop the size of a US 25 cent quarter) because even if it's too little, you can add more. Now what if you put too much or your batter just totally spread? Let your macarons sit for about 15 minutes so a thin shell can form. Then take a circular cookie cutter or a small cup with the circumference you desire and place it on your macaron. Wipe away whatever excess macaron batter there is outside of your circle and remove the cutter. You should have a normal sized macaron that will hold its shape. If your batter is still too liquidy and spreads out after you've tried fixing, wait another 15 minutes before repeating. Make sure that you give enough time after fixing a macaron via this method (~15-20 minutes) to form a skin around the edges because even if the tops are dry but you just scraped the sides, the sides wont have a skin and will likely crack or do something weird in the oven when you bake it. This technique also works well if you have a silicone macaron mat that actually has raised circle spots to place your macarons as this acts as a guide.
 
I suggest (if you haven't already) you go check out these pages if you are troubleshooting basic issues These are the web pages I looked at when I first started a few months ago and still look at today when something goes wrong.

• Food Nouveau - covers the basis really well
• ChocoParis - my favorite and probably most comprehensive troubleshooting page; so many people have posted questions and gotten answers so you're bound to find your problem
• Not So Humble Pie (aka Ms. Humble) - great for trouble shooting
• Zumbo - A nice clean cut problem & answer page
• Indulge with Mimi - helpful photos included, not the most complete troubleshooting page however

I know this was a really long post but hopefully you found some answers to any questions or concerns you've had about macarons. Macarons are beautiful little desserts when you get them right but know that they taste good no matter how they look so have a ready line-up of friends to eat your "failed" batches that don't meet the photoshoot cut!

The Quest for Guilt-Free Sweets: [Vegan] Persimmon Bread (no eggs, oil, or butter!)

What can I say, I'm a forever sweet girl... meaning I love sweets, not that I'm a crazy nice loving person (though well, if you were to say I was, I wouldn't stop you). But of course, my body, metabolism, genetics, and society all do not meaning I cannot, as much as I would like to, eat ice cream, cakes, and cookies all day every day. So I'm am on an endless quest to find healthier options for my usual sweet treats. Although today's creation is more inspired by my need to use up anything in the house before it goes bad - and in this case, it was the persimmons my mom's coworkers and friends had given her. Personally, I'm not a huge fan of persimmons. I'm not sure why but they're not my go-to fruit and I definitely wouldn't be eating them plain (I also hate papaya and I think persimmons and papaya are pretty similar but who knows).

I searched high and low on the Internet for persimmon recipes and finally decided to go with the one with the highest ratings - aka this one here from AllRecipes (my go to for almost everything I try out). One thing I especially like about AllRecipes (besides the fact that there are always such good reviews, feedback, and tips) is that you can adjust the serving size! The original recipe that I used was set to make 3 loves of bread! Since I've never made persimmon bread and I was planning on making a lot of modifications, I decided to play it safe and 1/4 the recipe to make one small loaf to test out first. (Trust me, I have a LOT more persimmon puree to use up.)

Here's what the ingredients of my modified persimmon recipe ended up as:

• 1/2 cup persimmon pulp
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 5/8 cup white sugar
• 1/4 cup unsweetened applesauce
• 1 substitute egg (meaning 1 tablespoon flax seed + 3 tablespoons of water let to sit for 5 minutes or until it becomes a thick gooey paste)
• 1/4 - 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1/8 - 1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
• 1/8 - 1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
• 1/8 - 1/4 teaspoon ground ginger
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 3/4 cup all-purpose flour
• 1/4 cup chopped/broken walnuts

*Note: I write ranges of measurements for the spices because I eyeballed them. All of my spices have a sprinkle top lid so I never really measure them, I just estimate. I actually put a lot more cinnamon than I was planning on adding but the end result turned out fine so I don't think it's a big deal (I know I'm a terrible baker who doesn't follow the golden rule of BE PRECISE). I think you can adjust the amount of spices you want depending on whether or not you like them. I LOVE pumpkin anything and the spices that go with it so I assumed I'd like them just the same with the persimmons. 

If you ask why I didn't use an egg, it's not because I'm allergic to them, it's more like eggs are quite expensive at the moment where I live and I'd rather save my eggs for recipes that do require it (ie. to make an egg omelette). Flax seed is really good for you and I've used it in multiple recipes and had success replacing eggs with this flax seed+water combo. I was lucky that this recipe didn't call for butter and only oil as I was able to replace the oil with applesauce. I think applesauce can be used to substitute for butter but I'm not sure and haven't tried it yet so who knows. I have, however, used applesauce in a chocolate bread recipe before and it worked perfectly also so I had faith in subbing out the oil. If you aren't feeling so daring, I saw in the reviews a lot of people used olive oil to up the health factor. For those of you wanting to go even more healthier (which yes this isn't 100% guilt free but it is closer than the original recipe), I'd try using whole wheat flour or using some flax seed (without water) in place of some of the all-purpose flour (I wouldn't recommend using flax seed for ALL the flour though). You can also use honey instead of sugar or some sort of no calorie sugar (Monkfruit anyone?).

I followed all the same steps as the original recipe with minor modifications which you'll see below.

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Line 6x3 inch loaf pan/glass Tupperware with parchment paper (I actually used a special half parchment paper half foil but normal parchment paper is fine I think).
2. In a small bowl, stir together persimmon pulp and baking soda. Let stand while completing step 3 to thicken the pulp. It will become a thick jello like blob.
3. In a medium bowl, combine sugar, applesauce, flax seed egg, spices, and salt. Blend until smooth (I actually used a spoon to mix everything because I was too lazy to grab a whisk/use my electric beater/the spoon was working fine). 
4. Mix in persimmon pulp and flour in alternating manner. I did 1/4 cup flour, half of persimmon pulp, 1/4 cup flour, other half of persimmon pulp, 1/4 cup flour. 
5. Add walnuts. 
6. Pour batter into pan (up to 2/3 full)
7. Bake for 1 hour in the preheated oven, or until a toothpick inserted comes out clean. (I used a conventional oven so I actually made the temperature like 345 F and took my bread out at 50 minutes.) Cool in pan for 10 minutes (I waited like 5) before removing to a wire rack to cool completely.

 This bread is similar to a banana or pumpkin bread in that it's super moist. I'm not sure if I would call it dense..I guess it is but not in the heavy rich way. I think I could have baked my bread a little longer in the oven to dry it out a bit more and make it less moist (I'm not 100% sure if that would have helped but that's what the Internet suggests so I might give that a try next time I make this..which will be soon seeing how much persimmon puree I still have!) A lot of reviewers mentioned difficulty removing the bread from its pan due to the extreme moistness which is why I lined my glass loaf-shaped Tupperware with parchment paper. I didn't have to worry about cleaning the pan and literally just pulled the bread out of the pan! I let it cool on the wire rack for a good 10-15 minutes before prying the parchment paper away from the sides of the bread.

Other changes I might do for my next attempt include decreasing the sugar further (although I found the bread to be perfect in sweetness but hey, you can always have less sugar!) or using honey instead of sugar, increasing the amount of flour I used to make the cake slightly less moist, adding raisins or more walnuts, and upping the spices. I mean honestly I'm really satisfied and happy with how the bread turned out but I want to play around with the ingredients more and see what a difference it makes. Normally I don't make a recipe more than once or twice because I don't have enough ingredients or time, but really this was so easy and simple and I have so much persimmon puree, I might as well!

Anyways, that's my take on persimmon bread. I know lots of people have their own take on it so if you know a recipe you think is better and/or healthier, leave it in the comments below. Or if you even have another persimmon recipe cause.. we have SO many persimmons and puree that I don't know how many times I can make this bread before my parents get sick of it.

Baking with Tammy: How to Make Cookie Stamps and USE them! (Cookie Recipe included)

Today I want to share with you how to make cookie stamps and the best type of cookie recipe I've found to use them on. If you don't know, cookie stamps are literally stamps (like the ones you would dip in ink) except you use them on cookies. They're generally made out of plastic and can be found at most places - craft stores, grocery stores, etc. The hard part is finding one with a design you want! Ebay has a great selection and I actually purchased this letter cookie stamp for super cheap and it works perfectly well. But of course, sometimes you want to make your own special design right? For me, it's Game of Thrones cookie stamps. Hopefully you all know what that is, but if not, Game of Thrones is a TV show on HBO and it's kind of.. intense (ie. blood and lots of nude people) but it's a really great show (story line wise). I've been reading the books (half way through the latest one!) and I'm loving it. But anyways, I'm part of a school club and we're having a bake sale so we decided to make it Game of Thrones themed so I needed cookie stamps to make cookies with the House symbols engraved (or stamped) onto them. That being said, on Etsy, someone IS selling Game of Thrones (as well as some other themed) cookie stamps but they were more than $10 each and would be shipped from Australia, so with my small budget and lack of time, I decided to try and make them myself.

I looked up a ton of cookie stamp tutorials and found this page to be the most useful and was the one I followed. The author is pretty vague about their recipe that they used to make the salt-dough, which is what I used to make my cookie stamps. You can use clay, which was my original plan, but the author, and from what other people online were saying, said it might not be safe even if the clay is said to be non-toxic. Honestly, I don't know but I thought it wouldn't hurt to try using salt-dough and it worked out fine. The webpage recipe calls for "one part hot water, one part salt and two parts plain all-purpose flour". I also looked up other recipes for salt dough and they were all about the same so I ended up using this one. A tip that I think is an obvious one, but still a good one to mention, is to start off with less if you're not sure. I mean especially for me trying out the cookie recipes, I'm glad I wasn't making giant batches because if they didn't turn out well, well then I'd be the one eating all the cookies which, as much as I love my cookies, would not be a good thing. Or I'd have to throw them away which my sister does when she isn't happy with her baking results but I can never do that. Hm maybe that's why I'm so much fatter than my sister (LOL). Ok back on the topic, what I used to make my salt dough was:

• 1/4 cup of hot water
• 1/4 cup of salt
• 1/2 cup of all-purpose

That gave me just enough to make 5 cookie stamps as shown below. The salt dough was great, way better than cookie recipes - probably because there's no butter. But anyways it was totally not sticky and easy to roll out. It takes a while to harden completely so you have a lot of time to mess up (like me) or to spend forever making a design (also like me). I had to free draw out all of the designs and I used a combination of tooth picks and pencils. If you're into nail art and have dotting tools, I think those would be really great too (I didn't have mine at the time). Free-hand drawing is super hard but my mom did come up with the idea to use saran wrap and trace out the designs onto the saran wrap using sharpie and then put the saran wrap over the salt-dough and sort of poke holes to get the basic outline of the design into the dough. Then we removed the saran wrap and finished tracing/filling in the gaps of the design on the salt dough. It wasn't a perfect method but it did work a bit so if you're struggling, you can give that method a shot. Once you're satisfied with your designs (and make sure you make them deep enough with sharp defined edges or else the designs will not stamp into the cookies very well), you cut them out. I used a circular glass cup from my local Japanese Daiso (cheap dollar store basically) and it worked perfect. That's also what I used to cut out my cookies, which you'll see later. I left my salt-dough cookie stamps to dry for about a day and a half (overnight) and then baked them at 275 for who knows how long. The webpage I was looking out wasn't specific about the temperature or time for baking them but other sites said about that temperature and I started off with 20 minutes. I flipped them over and then did another 10 but they still didn't feel ready so then I did another 20. I would keep a good eye on them if you're worried especially since what I'm giving you isn't an exact baking time.

Now once I had my cookie stamps all baked and hardened, I set off to find the perfect cookies for stamping. Since I've done cookie cutting before, I know that cookies spread when you bake them so I wanted to find a recipe that spread the least and would hold my design the best. Looking back at the page that I got my salt-dough recipe from, the author links you to this sugar cookie recipe and says they just didn't add baking powder. I didn't use that recipe though because I forgot about it and first tried this sugar cookie recipe from Allrecipes. I had a lot of trouble with it, but the one thing I like about Allrecipes is that you adjust the measurements to change the serving size to how you like. That original recipe makes 60 cookies and since I was just trying it out, I changed it to only 10. I'm glad I did because it definitely wasn't the recipe for me. Not that it was bad because hey, there are so many reviews on that recipe saying how good it is but for me, I'm not sure what I did wrong but I left it in the fridge for over 6 hours and when I came back and tried to roll it out, it was way too sticky. So I used powdered sugar and flour to try and make it firm enough to roll out and stamp. I didn't use precise measurements or anything like exact weight or exact leveling off the flour, but I never do and usually my stuff turns out fine LOL but perhaps that's why this recipe didn't work for me. Nevertheless, the cookies did taste good but they just didn't hold the design very well. As you can see from the picture, the design is there, but it's faint. That picture is also of one of the better cookies that turned out. Some of the other ones just completely did not show up. I should mention that I didn't leave out the baking powder and that most likely contributed to the rising/spreading of my cookies.

So the next recipe I used, and had successful results, is from Food Network. This recipe is a shortbread recipe because after my fail with the first sugar cookies, I decided to look up some tips on how to prevent the design from fading. From what I read, most people recommended using a recipe without baking soda or leaveners which cause the cookie to rise. Many other sites also recommended shortbread cookies rather than sugar cookies so that's how I stumbled upon the Foodnetwork shortbread recipe. The recipe said it makes 20 cookies but called for 3 STICKS (I know it says 3/4 lbs which is important because some people in the reviews said they had thought it was 3/4 cup which is WAY less butter haha) of butter and I didn't exactly want to use that much butter on a recipe I'd never tried. So I chose to 1/3 the entire recipe allowing me to only use  1 stick of butter, equivalent to 1/2 cup of butter. These are the measurements I used:

• 1 stick of butter (ie. 1/2 cup)
• 1/3 cup of white sugar
• 1/3 tsp of vanilla extract
• 1.17 cups of flour
• 1/12 tsp salt

Now as you can see, some of the measurements (aka the flour and salt) are a bit wonky. But like I said earlier, I'm never too precise when baking (which I know isn't a good thing) and since I'm lazy about washing dishes, I just re-used my 1/3 cup that I had used for the white sugar and did 3 scoops of flour (=1 cup) leveled off by shaking the cup so that it was about 1/3.  Before I ramble on further, I did follow the instructions from the Food Network recipe meaning I did this:

1. Cream butter and sugar 
1. I say cream meaning I used my sister's kitchen aid and used the white paddle mixer instead of the standard stainless steal whisk. Most people say not to over do this step so I just had it on low and continued to mix it about 20 seconds after the butter and sugar had came together. My butter probably wasn't at room temperature since I had taken it out of the fridge while I got the rest of my ingredients so it was probably only out of the fridge for about a minute.
2. Add in vanilla extract and mix.
1. I mixed for about 20 seconds before moving on to the next step
3. Add flour and salt

1. Like I mentioned earlier, I used my 1/3 cup from the sugar measurement and added in the flour in thirds while mixing. Because a lot of people in the reviews had said the dough had been too crumbly, I wanted to make sure each flour addition mixed together before adding the next spoonful of flour so that I didn't add too much flour. I'm not sure if it made a difference to add it in in thirds rather than all at once, but after my 3 1/3 cup spoonfuls, I added a little (about half a tablespoon) more of flour and let it mix together. I then used a rubber scraper spoon to mix in any flour on the sides of the bowl and it easily formed a nice dough ball.
2. I want to mention that the dough wasn't crumbly or sticky at all. It was seriously perfect. A little oily feeling from the butter but it didn't stick to my hands at all. It was kind of awesome *__* 
3. Oh and another side note, the original recipe says to mix the flour and salt together in a bowl before adding but obvi, lazy me didn't do that and just sprinkled (hey that's like what 1/12 a teaspoon is right?) a dash of salt in with my second addition of flour. 
4. Shape dough into ball, roll out, stamp, and cut!

• At this step, I split my dough in half and rolled out one half and put the other half in the fridge. The original recipe says to roll out the dough and put it in the fridge for half an hour but many people said they hadn't needed to do that and my dough felt perfectly fine so I though it'd try half without putting it in the fridge and both of them worked out fine.
• Note, I rolled my dough to about 1 cm thick. I did it a little thicker (about 1.5) in the beginning because using my stamps, I would press down so the dough would thin out.
• A tip I found while researching is to roll your dough out on your parchment paper so that you don't have to ruin the cookies by transferring them from wherever you rolled them, to your cookie sheet. By rolling them on the parchment paper and stamping and cutting them there, I could just take the parchment paper and plop it on the cookie sheet and bake. I would HIGHLY suggest doing this because, especially for my thinner cookies, when I tried to pick them up because they were too close to another cookie I had stamped, they would slightly deform.

     5. Bake until edges start browning at 350 F.

• I know, annoying, I'm not giving you an exact time right? But that's because the original recipe calls for 20-25 minutes but I was using a toaster oven and only baking 4-5 cookies at a time (I made 3 batches) so I only baked my cookies for 10 minutes, 11 minutes, and 12 minutes (respectively for each batch). I was keeping an eye on my cookies and they weren't even browning at the edges very much so I probably could have kept them in longer. 

Okay I think that's a detailed enough instruction guide on how I got my cookies to turn out nicely. Some other tips I want to mention that really helped me get nice cookies were:

Finished result~! Super happy with them :) As you can tell, the letter stamped cookies are definitely more prominent but I think my cookie stamps fared pretty well for what I was expecting.

• Lightly flour your cookie stamps before stamping. I made the mistake of not doing that for the first cookie I stamped using the shortbread recipe and the dough totally stuck to it so I had to like scrape/peel it off. Flouring helps SO MUCH. I can not stress that. I filled up my 1/3 measuring cup with a little bit of flour and would use that to sprinkle and rub onto my stamps. I then tapped off the excess on my surface (aka cutting board lol). Some people also use powdered sugar instead of flour.
• Make sure your oven is properly heated to the right temperature. I read this helps prevent spreading if it's at the right temperature the moment you put in the cookies. Also don't open the door to peak at them, apparently this ruins them. Now I'm not a super expert but I follow those two rules and my cookies didn't spread and turned out great so it doesn't hurt right?
• I would suggest putting some the dough you're not using in the fridge if you can. Since I was using my letter stamper, it actually took me some time to form out my letters and put them into the bar to stamp so I would put the dough I wasn't working with in the fridge while I was stamping out a portion of the rolled out dough. While the dough isn't sticky, it does get a little mushy (not like banana mushy!) and soft so putting it in the fridge doesn't hurt in my opinion.
• For sugar cookies, people say to stamp & cut your cookies and then leave them in the fridge before baking. I tried that with my original recipe and I don't think it did much. I didn't do it for my shortbread cookie recipe and they were fine. Obviously that could be due to differences in the ingredients I used and it makes sense to put them in the fridge before you bake them so they don't spread as much BUT for the shortbread recipe I used, I think you'll be fine if you don't do this :)

So that's it for this incredibly long post. Let me know if you try out this recipe or if you have any other cookie recipes that worked for your cookie stamps. I hope this advice/my notes help you along. Definitely go read up some other sites and other people's reviews because everyone has a different kitchen (ie. oven, temperature, climate, butter softness levels) and I'm sure all of this factors in to whether or not you have a successful result. So just try little batches so that you can adjust ingredients or methods if the first attempt doesn't work out and don't give up! Good luck and have fun baking~!

[Baking] Easy Chocolate Lava Cake Recipe

Baking has been something that I'm not particularly amazing at because half the time I don't have all the ingredients and I always end up substituting something in, but hey it always turns out edible albeit not exactly the most presentable piece. NEVERTHELESS, that doesn't stop me from scouting out the simplest recipes to use up leftover items in the pantry as I did recently with old leftover chocolate from who knows when. I decided to make chocolate lava cake because (1) my mother absolutely loves this and it's one of the few sweet things she'll eat and (2) the recipes online seemed easy enough. So with a few of my infamous adjustments, here's what I came with and I hope you try it out and enjoy ;)

Ingredients:

• 1 egg yolk
• 1 egg
• 1.5 tablespoons white sugar
• 1.75 ounces of chopped dark chocolate
• 2.5 tablespoons butter + extra to butter the ramekins
• 2 teaspoons unsweetened cocoa powder
• 1.5 tablespoons flour
• a sprinkle of salt
• a dash of vanilla extract (to your liking!)

I've never known what to do when a recipe calls for just egg whites or egg yolks but I've discovered leftover egg white is perfect for egg white omelets or macarons and leftover egg yolk works perfectly for either this lava cake recipe or creme brulee! Never let any bit of your egg go to waste! Also, I actually ended up not even having enough dark chocolate so I mixed in some Hershey's milk chocolate and I think it turned out just fine. Use any type of chocolate you like depending on your preference (or if you want to be "healthy", go with 70% or higher dark chocolate for those antioxidants~!). As a side note, the original recipe calls for twice as much of each ingredient because I halved the recipe to only make 2 ramekins.

I first mixed the egg yolk, egg, and sugar in a bowl until the mixture looked frothy and well, "well-mixed".

Then I melted the chocolate and butter and since I was too lazy to set up a double boiler, I just microwaved my chocolate at 30 second intervals (I only needed to do it 3 times before my chocolate was completely melted). Feel free to use whatever method you prefer though! After each microwaving session, I would take the bowl out and give it a quick stir to make sure none of the chocolate was getting too much heat and burning. I wouldn't exactly recommend microwaving if you're not going to be careful because you might end up overheating the chocolate and that just gets annoying to clean off (trust me, I've learned the hard way).

Once the chocolate was all the way melted, I threw it into the bowl and gave it a quick mix!

Once the chocolate was well mixed in, I added the cocoa powder, mixed, flour, mixed, and then salt and mixed. I had to use a spatula to make sure all the ingredients got mixed in (oh the struggles of a stand mixer).

 

After my dark chocolately goodness was all mixed together, I poured it (somewhat) evenly into the two ramekins I had buttered earlier,  covered them in saran wrap, and left them in the refrigerator for about 5-6 hours. You definitely don't need to leave it in that long but it doesn't hurt. I only waited because I prepared the mixture in the afternoon and wanted to bake it fresh for my parents for dinner. The shortest amount of time to refrigerate the batter is 30 minutes though so even if you're in a time crunch, you should have enough time to let these sit before baking! 

When it came time to bake, I removed the saran wrap and added hot water that went about halfway up my ramekins. I ended up baking them for about 17 minutes but I think a little less time would have been better because while one of them was perfect, the other one was a bit over done and didn't have a lot of the "lava" (aka oozing chocolate when you cut into it). It's hard to gauge when these are done though because you can't do the standard toothpick check. In my opinion though, under-baked is better than over (for lava cake at least) so go for less time at first if you're not sure.

I topped my cakes with strawberries and mint leaves from my backyard and sprinkled a bit of powder sugar and wahla~! Technically you should be able to take the cakes out but I suppose I didn't butter them well enough because they were pretty solidly stuck in the ramekins and I didn't want to ruin them so I just left them in the bowls.

Step-by-Step Instructions

1. Butter (and I mean BUTTER!) 2 ramekins and set aside.
2. Mix together egg yolk, egg, and sugar in a bowl until "light, foamy, and lemon colored."
3. Melt chocolate and butter at 30-second intervals in the microwave or use a double boiler. If using the microwave, stir after each heating until completely smooth and melted. Do not overheat the chocolate!
4. Incorporate melted chocolate into egg+sugar mixture.
5. Add cocoa powder, flour, salt, and vanilla extract, mixing in between each addition.
6. Pour batter into buttered ramekins (lightly tap on cutting board/smooth surface to remove any air bubbles)
7. Refrigerate for a minimum of 30 minutes (any longer doesn't seem to negatively affect the batter though).
8. A few minutes before you want to bake your lava cakes, preheat oven to 425 degrees F.
9. Take the ramekins out of the refrigerator and place into an oven-safe dish. It must be deep enough to allow you to pour hot water to halfway up the ramekins.
10. Bake for 15-18 minutes. 
11. Let cool for 5-10 minutes before attempting to take them out of the ramekins. They may still be hot so be careful and wear oven mitts. Use a knife to cut around the ramekins and invert them to release the cakes. 
12. Top with any toppings of your choice like fruit, powdered sugar, or more chocolate!

Recipe adapted from Chef John's Chocolate Lava Cake