Shiz Can't Cook Series: Egg-less Cupcakes

So now that we know Popo is allergic to eggs, I looked up some egg free cupcake recipes online. Most of them are chocolate... but I don't think I'm ready to give a 13 month old some chocolate yet.

Then! I found a vegan website that had these strawberry cupcakes. Could be muffins. What is the difference between cupcakes & muffins anyway? With or without the frosting?

Anyhoo, I decided to give it a try.

The dry:
1 3/4 cup flour
1/2 cup sugar
1 tsp baking soda

The wet:
1/2 cup canola oil
1 Tbsp vinegar
1 tsp vanilla
8 oz strawberry puree

I don't really care for strawberries, nor do I have frozen strawberries on hand, so I substituted w/ cranberry-raspberry apple sauce. Each snack cup was 3.9 oz, so 2 snack cups will do.

Oh, the original recipe asked for 3/4 cup to 1 cup sugar, but since this is for a toddler, I went w/ 1/3 cup sugar. Drastically less, but it should be sweet enough.

The site said to mix the dry, then mix the wet separately, but I just dumped them all in the same bowl. Started out w/ the dry, then added the wet.

Maybe I should have waited to put the vinegar last, since the chemical reaction of the baking soda + vinegar is supposed to do something for baking, right? But I don't know the science of it, so I just dumped them in random order.

The batter looked rather purple, even though the cranberry-raspberry apple sauce was dark pink. I might get purple cupcakes *laugh*

Also the batter isn't very liquid-y. Kinda lumpy, like oatmeal. But I poured/dumped them into the cupcake molds.

Oven: 350F for 22 mins

Ta dah!
(wait, it's still baking... photo & description coming shortly)

Shiz Can't Cook Series: Chicken Bao

Lately I've been using the bread machine for making dough.

Last time I baked individual round white bread (and some w/ jam & cream cheese on top), which came out pretty good.

This time I decided we'll use the dough to make chicken bao.
I used this recipe as the base, but omitted the dark sauces & most of the sugar since we're not making a BBQ pork bao.

Chicken bao filling:
1) Cook chicken
1 Tbs oil
1/2 lbs chicken, diced
salt & pepper to flavor

2) Cook onion, green onion separately until soft
1 Tbs oil
3/4 cup onion, chopped
4 Tbs green onion, chopped
1 cube of mashed garlic
1 cube of mashed ginger

3) Mix in chicken
1 tsp sesame oil

4) Add the stuff to make the "goo"
4 Tbs cooking sake
1 Tbs sugar
1 Tbs corn starch

We didn't have regular sugar, so added brown sugar. The recipe called for 3 Tbs of sugar, and I wasn't planning of putting it in, but I forgot & added 1 Tbs. It was a little too sweet. Next time we'll cut it in half.

Good thing Sat was there to work on the flavoring. I'm not very good at determining how food should taste. That's why Shiz can't cook, yo!

As for wrapping the gooey chicken in the dough... I thought it'd be the same as gyoza. Hm, these things need to be stretched out. My first one ripped at the bottom... but I stuck the bao on wax paper & it covered it up.

So they key is to don't stretch out (=thin out) the bottom, but the edges.

Okay.
The next few looked pretty good.

After 10 mins of steaming... voila!

It was actually really good :)

Now I did mess up on the last batch. I forgot to check the water level of the steamer... and it ran out of water for the last minute or two. So the bottoms got a bit burnt. Oops.


But Dee said it still tasted okay. Whew.

Next we'll try BBQ pork or red bean. Yum!
My goal is to make 'em nice and pretty looking, so I can take them to potlucks... but that may not be happening anytime soon.

Shiz Can't Cook Series: Baked Cheese Cake

Last week, Ards offered to help make cupcakes for Popo's birthday.

It was a red velvet cake recipe, so it said to get 2 cups of cream cheese ready for the frosting. So Ards got a tub of cream cheese from Costco. Only to realize that 2 cups was 1/4 of the tub (to her credit, she was calculating for two batches... but we didn't need that much frosting & only made one batch for the two batches of cupcakes).

Since I was left w/ a good amount of cream cheese, Sat told me to make cheesecake.

Okay, I heard it was pretty easy... but I never made cheesecake before. And with no one around to oversee my baking? This can't end up good.

I bought a cheesecake book at BookOff ($1).
Also looked at CookPad.
And found a "just mix everything in a bowl" recipe for baked cheese cake.

Recipe conversion from Japanese measurements to US measurements is tough, but that's where Google/Bing comes in handy. They're just estimates, but good enough for me!

First, I tried to whisk the ingredients all together.
But lots of little clumps of cream cheese remained.

Time to whip 'em all up in the Magic Bullet!
Argh! The recipe is too much for one MB cup. Split the mixing into two batches...

Ta-dah!
Looks very foamy, but let's pour away in silicone cups (lined w/ cupcake sheets).

It was barely enough for 12 cups.
(The original recipe was for a 15cm round. That's like... 6 inches?)

Baked the cheesecake for 40 mins.
When they came out, they were nice and puffy. But I knew it was going to shrink when it cools down... and shrink it did.


The middle seems a little undercooked, but it has the sour-ish taste of Japanese cheesecakes.

I heard you can make this in the rice cooker too.