Cornbread + News

Hehe, oh Instagram...

I have an iPhone now so it has replaced my horrible digital camera.  And I also use Instagram so haha I have all these edited pictures on my phone with all these added effects/colors. So my pictures might start looking like this :P Oh :P You can follow me on Instagram at: cookchang.

But that wasn't the news. I'm actually WORKING for Gingham now :D! I'm a part time pastry cook there! I still can't believe it and I'm super nervous whenever I go to work but so far I'm surviving.  I hope I can learn everything and pull my act together by the end of May.  I also hope I don't get fired... :/

I make mini cornbread muffins everyday at work.  So you think I'd get sick of it wouldn't you? Haha for some reason a few days ago I was really inspired to make some so I did.

Lotsa cornbread!

But I decided to make it as bread and bake it in a casserole dish instead of muffins.  I personally like this way better. I feel like it keeps it more moist.  I add some chives and some garam masala (Indian spice used in lots of curries)  to it to give it more flavor.  Someone once made me some roasted corn that was seasoned with garam masala.  SO GOOD. So I was inspired by that and added garam masala to this cornbread. It was pretty good.  A nice sweet savory flavor going on.

I haven't posted in over a month I realize that.  I do have a good amount of pictures but they're all on my iPhone and not very many of each dish, but I'll work with what I have.  I'll try to update more often. So sorry about the lack of posts for the last month!

Until next time!

Future

Hey everyybodyy,

A lot of things have been going on lately.  I've been cooking still don't worry, but just not taking any pictures.

I recently came back from my cousin's who is getting married in a couple of months and I did a dessert tasting for her.  So I now get to make 75 brownies and 75 earl grey macarons for her wedding! Woot!
I have some small baking projects coming up as well: baking for a student organization on campus for a fundraiser and making desserts for two events hosted by some friends.

I also just got an internship at a restaurant.  I get to follow a pastry cook around and I'm super excited, but also terrified.  It starts on Monday so we'll see how that goes.  On top of the internship I just got notice from my transcribing job, which by the way has not contacted me for over a month, that they have a new project so I have work now.

ALL that being said, I think I'm going to have a hard time keeping up with this blog.  My updates will become a lot less frequent, maybe very rare.  So it's really up to you how much you want to check.  Hah, I suggest maybe just checking at the end of each month and see what is going on.  But who knows? I might get inspired to keep up, but just giving you all a heads up and update on my life.

Thanks for you support!

Chocolate Cake + Blueberry [Vanilla] Buttercream

Hello everyone!

I am really sorry about not being consistent about my blogging.  I haven't really done anything worth blogging, also haven't been taking pictures lately either...I'll try to do a better job. Can't make any promises though 'cause no one likes it when you break a promise.

While at home, I got to cook some things. I made this cake with my good friend, Hope.  It's been quite a long time since I saw her, so it was nice catching up and even better that we got to make this cake together :D!  I used this chocolate cake recipe, so good and so moist!  I suggest you try making it too!

I also attempted to make some blueberry buttercream.  I tried to make a blueberry syrup and added it into the buttercream, but it mostly just changed the color of it.  I could taste it slightly, but it was hard to know it was blueberry.  So instead of just butter and confectioners sugar mixed in, I threw in some vanilla extract, so it was blue vanilla buttercream :P
It was still tasty, don't get me wrong, just wanted more blueberry flavor to come out.  And we topped it off with some strawberry slices.  Woot!

I also got an iPhone 4S while I was at home! First smart phone ever, man it has too many apps and too many features, but I love it! It has also turned into my new camera :P So hopefully pictures will be a bit better. My digital camera is like 5-6 years old so yeah, I'm pretty sure the iPhone has more megapixels.

Ah, I'll be baking for my cousin's wedding and she wants a dessert tasting this month so I'll be doing a lot of practicing, hopefully those will be up as I do them! Can't wait! Until next time!

Beer-Cheese-Mustard Pull Apart Bread

Man, it's so hard to be consistent with blogging.  I don't know how some people put posts up every other day, they're nuts!

I've been on this...bread, yeast using phase.  It's so much fun and SO worth it.  I feel like I don't need to go to bakeries anymore...

BREAD!!!

I've been home since Tuesday night and so far it's been nice.  I've seen some old friends, baked a small cake, went out shopping, and attempted to dye my hair brown.  I say attempted because it was such a fail.  I can only kind of tell in certain light and from certain angles.   Oh and also in the sunlight.  Well, I'm going to redye it sometime next week and we'll see what happens :)

Yay for amazing dough cutting skills...

I made this bread with a good friend, Connie this past weekend.  Haha we didn't really think about the amount of time it took to let it rise and all that so we started making it at around 8:30pm.  YES for late night baking! I ended up getting home at around 1am.  Hah fun times! We ended up watching Hitch :P It was my first time despite it being out for a million years...I'm not on top of movies, okay?

All tucked in the loaf pan

The recipe we used was this one of course from Smitten Kitchen.  I don't know too much about beer but my friend suggested we use a Widmer Hefeweizen (which my friend pointed out to me is a not a dark beer as I had originally thought, but after looking online is a wheat ale).  Gosh it was SO good!  Such a nice deep flavor.  Why don't people like beer? I'm not an alcoholic I swear. Beer can add such nice flavor to things. Mmm MMm good!

I think next time we want to use a gruyere, maybe different flavors, but yeah bread making is a fun process.  We also threw a bit of jalapeno powder and some extra smoked spanish paprika to the cheese.  The mustard also gave a nice tangy kick to the bread. In the end it was like a really awesome soft fluffy grilled cheese!

I want moreee!

I'm actually going to be making a nice 4 course meal for my parents and some family friends.  Haha, yay for practice! :D I can't wait!  Until next time! Hope I don't forget to take pictures.