We’ve been lucky the past couple weeks to have some of our friends from the East Coast in the area on separate occasions — living on the other side of the country, we don’t get many opportunities to see my friends from back home, so it’s always nice when they come to visit San Francisco.
A couple weeks ago, April and Ed came to visit. April and I were close friends in middle school, and although we lost touch after we moved on to go to separate high schools and universities, she got back in touch with me right before I moved to California and she and Ed were able to make it to our wedding two years ago! April and Ed live in gorgeous Georgetown back in DC, but April just got accepted at UC Berkeley so she has decided to get her PhD there starting in the fall. They were visiting the area to see the school, so we caught up with them over dinner in Berkeley. They will both be moving to the Bay Area in August, and I’m so excited that I’ll have one of my dearest childhood friends nearby again!
Having dinner with April and Ed at La Med in Berkeley.
This past weekend, we got to spend a whole day on Saturday with our friends Kathleen and Carlos. I went to both middle school and high school with Kathleen, and they were in the city this weekend for a conference that Carlos was attending.We spent the day at the farmer’s market by the Ferry Building and at Pier 39 before meeting up with Greg, another one of our good high school friends who lives in the city, over dinner. Here are some pictures!
Dan and I with Kathleen and Carlos at the Ferry Building in San Francisco
Enjoying some mouthwatering rotisserie chicken from the Roli Roti truck!
Dan with a Scharffen Berger mini-cake from the Miette bakery. So round and cute!
Walked over to Fisherman's Wharf... it was a windy day at Pier 39.
Kathleen and Carlos -- cute couple!
Kathleen and I at Pier 39.
The boys.
With a lobster at Fisherman's Wharf...
Greg took us to dinner at Nirvana, a delicious Burmese restaurant in the Castro.
It’s always nice to see some familiar faces from back home — it makes me feel a little less homesick. I love that even though it’s been well over a decade since middle school and high school, we can still pick up right where we left off. 🙂
Whether it be here in the Bay Area or the next time we’re back in DC, I can’t wait to see more of the friends I left back East. I miss everyone so much!
Dan and I were both in Southern California this weekend, although we arrived separately and were in different parts of SoCal and didn’t see each other for much of the time. Dan and his film buddies were in Pasadena to shoot a short, and they drove down on Friday night, whereas I flew down on Friday morning and stayed in Irvine and Torrance to spend time with my friends from college — our plans just happened to fall on the same weekend, so we ended up both being down there but ironically separated until it came time for us to drive back up to the Bay Area.
Dan may blog about his shoot a little later, but this post will be all about my adventures this past weekend. 😛
My good friend Mariko lives in Irvine, and I hadn’t seen her since last June, so I was really happy to have a chance to go spend some time with her this time. Our friend Shun from Virginia Tech is moving back to Japan, and he was stopping by SoCal for the weekend before flying to the other side of the world, so it was a good chance to see him as well, before he left the U.S.
We spent most of Friday in the Los Angeles area and Saturday in San Diego. Here are some photos from Day One in Manhattan Beach and Irvine….
Prosciutto & Mozzarella di Bufala tartine with sun-dried tomatoes & basil pesto from Le Pain Quotidien at Manhattan Beach. Delicieux!
Mari had a warm organic turkey and cheddar tartine. Also very yum.
Outside Le Pain Quotidien. We were pretty stuffed at this point. Thank you for the lunch, Mari!
We decided to walk it off with a stroll along Manhattan Beach.
Mariko being her usual adorable self.
Mari and Misono on Manhattan Beach!
It was such a gorgeous day to be at the beach!
Amazing sky, sand, and sea... stretching far into the distance.
We started getting a little giddy with the gorgeous beach and the lovely weather and started taking some silly photos.
What are we doing? I'm not quite sure myself... but they are amusing, no?
We hit up Pinkberry, the original tart frozen yogurt.
I love froyo, and it was my first time having Pinkberry. I liked it! 🙂
Original tart with mango and mochi toppings.
After we picked up Shun from the LAX, we drove to Irvine to have some late dinner at BCD Tofu House.
Quite a feast!
I don't like tofu, so instead of soon dubu, I had some of this bulgogi goodness. I hadn't had bulgogi in a few years! I used to have it all the time when I lived in NoVa.
Shun-chan eating froyo for the first time! Must capture moment...
Mari and I at Yogurtland, having froyo for the second time in six hours...
Looking at the photos, it looks like all we did was eat, scamper around the beach, and go eat some more… and more… and more…. which I suppose is essentially the gist of what happened. There’s just so much good food in the area, I end up wanting to eat everything I see. It was really nice to spend time with college friends and reminisce on our days back at Tech — sometimes I wish I could just go back and experience it all over again. (I believe I suffer from a bit of Peter Pan Complex.) But it’s comforting to see that your close friends from those days have never really changed that much, and that you can always pick up right where you left off with them. It really makes me grateful for the friendships I made and have been able to carry with me.
Stay tuned for Part II, in which we encounter giant sea creatures and scale treacherous rock cliffs. (Sounds so epic!)
The weather has been amazing for the last week here, and this past weekend was no exception. It’s regularly been sunny and 70 degrees, and it really feels like spring has finally arrived. I am not a huge fan of rain, so I couldn’t wait for the rainy season to be over. (The weather in the Bay Area is pretty nice all year round, with the exception of about eleven straight weeks of rain, during which I am miserable.)
Dan and I decided to spend Saturday in San Francisco, since we had tickets to go see the Tutankhamun exhibit at de Young museum in the evening. I’d been wanting to see the exhibit since it came to San Francisco in June of last year, and it happens to be ending next weekend. (Talk about waiting until the last minute, huh?) We spent the afternoon walking around Baker Beach, which sparkled under the California sunshine. The beach also has a great view of the Golden Gate Bridge.
After the beach, we drove through Golden Gate Park and headed over to dinner, past the rolling hills of San Francisco…
…and arrived at San Tung! The dry-fried chicken wings here are out of this world! I’m usually not that crazy about wings because they are so messy to eat, but these are the best I have ever had. Ever!
The shrimp and leek dumplings are pretty yummy, too…
Plus the seafood noodle soup! Yes, we ate all of this between the two of us.
Full and content, we headed over to de Young Museum to see the exhibit “Tutankhamun and The Golden Age of The Pharoahs.”
I realize that my blog post title is a little misleading, because we didn’t actually see any mummies. King Tut’s mummy and his three nested coffins and stone sarcophagus have actually never left Egypt, and he continues to rest in the Valley of the Kings. I wanted to see the gold mask of King Tut (which apparently travelled around the world for different exhibits back in the ’70s), but the Egyptian government no longer lets it travel outside of Egypt, as it has been declared a national treasure (and rightly so). Still, the exhibition at de Young was very impressive, showcasing over 130 outstanding works from King Tut’s tomb, as well as those of his royal predecessors, family, and court officials. It’s incredible how intricately and artfully crafted those pieces were, when they were created over 3,200 years ago. During my four years of taking art history courses in college, I remember studying some of those works in my archaeology course with Profess or Knoblauch so it was sort of surreal to see them in person. I feel really fortunate to have been able to catch the exhibit in its last week. Although Tutankhamun is leaving San Francisco at the end of the month, it’ll be making its way over to New York, Toronto and Denver in the coming months, so I definitely recommend it for anyone who is interested and lives near one of those cities!
After having that s’mores cupcake from Cupkates Truck last weekend, I became sort of obsessed. I kept having cravings for more of them the whole week for more. It’s like once my taste buds were awakened to the divine concept of s’mores in the form of a cupcake, they desperately needed to have more. I kept talking about them with Dan, and we then decided that instead of hunting that darned cupcake truck down again, we’d try making those delicious morsels ourselves.
We were a little apprehensive about the mission ending in disaster, but it turned into a fun collaborative project for the two of us. 🙂 And the results were not too shabby, if I do say so myself:
As I usually try to do here, I’m going to post the recipe, but I’m also going to try something new. My friend Luice recently introduced me to The Pioneer Woman Ree Drummond’s site. If you’re not familiar with her, she’s a woman who used to live an urban lifestyle (growing up in Chicago and then attending college in Los Angeles) who then fell in love with a cowboy (yes, a cowboy) and lives out in the countryside now. She calls her cowboy husband “The Marlboro Man” and her four adorable kids her “punks,” and despite the fact that her life is 180 degrees different from her previous city life, she actually fell in love with the country life. She has a huge online presence, with her site featuring extensive topics — everything from recipes to a personal blog and sections dedicated to photography, home & gardening and homeschooling. (I especially loved reading “Black Heels to Tractor Wheels,” her love story about how she met The Marlboro Man and how their whirlwind romance took off… although I confess I haven’t read all of it yet — it’s a series of blog posts.)Â Aside from being a funny personality and a really good writer, her recipes are awesome in that she uses step-by-step photos in them. I really love how she does this, because I’m a very visual learner and it really helps for me to see each of the steps as photographs (really pretty ones, too!) — when I buy cookbooks, I go out of my way to find ones that have lots of pictures in them. So I decided to try out this clever idea and do this post “The Pioneer Woman”-style. I’m not sure if it’s something I’ll be trying again anytime soon, though — taking step-by-step photos is actually pretty tiring and it’s difficult to get the shots to look good. Nevertheless, here goes my pathetic attempt.
The actual recipe is at the bottom of the post, for those who just want to skip the photos or want the detailed ingredients and directions.
The ingredients for the chocolate cupcakes: sugar, flour, cocoa powder, vegetable oil, whole milk (I only had 2% but the recipe calls for whole), baking powder, baking soda, eggs, and vanilla extract.
Combine the dry ingredients in a large bowl.
Stir the dry ingredients until well combined.
Pour in the other ingredients: egg, oil, milk, vanilla extract.
Beat with an electric mixer on medium speed.
Add 1 cup of boiling water. Batter will be watery but no worries! That is how it should be. (I know this photo doesn't look very appetizing, but trust me on this one.)
Fill the cupcake lines with the batter.
Fill 1/2 to 3/4 full with batter.
Bake for 22-24 minutes. Remove from oven and cool.
What you will need for the frosting: sugar, light corn syrup, mini marshmallows, vanilla extract, egg whites, cream of tartar, and salt.
Combine the sugar, corn syrup, egg whites, cream of tartar, and salt.
Place the bowl with the mixture over a pot of simmering water (not touching the water).
Continue stirring over heat until sugar is dissolved and mixture becomes warm to the touch.
Remove the bowl from heat and beat on medium-high speed with an electric mixer until soft peaks form and the mixture is still warm.
Add in 1 cup of marshmallows and 1 teaspoon vanilla extract. Reduce mixing speed to low.
Beat until marshmallows have melted and blended completely into the mixture. The frosting should be used right away.
Frost the chocolate cupcakes with the marshmallow frosting.
Pile on that frosting!
S'mores cupcakes are not complete without these key players: graham crackers and chocolate. Most recipes recommend Hersheys chocolate bars but I prefer Cadbury.
Chop the chocolates into bitesize pieces. S'mores traditionally use milk chocolate, but if you're a dark chocolate lover like me, feel free to use dark!
Stick pieces of graham crackers and chocolates into the tops of the frosted cupcakes.
Use a culinary butane torch to slightly toast the frosting. Carefully not to get too close as to scorch the frosting!
Dan is a closet pyro, so I think he enjoyed helping with this part the most. He mastered the "gentle sweeping motion" in toasting the frosting.
S'mores Cupcakes!
We were pretty impressed with ourselves. They actually came out looking pretty nice!
This one is my favorite. Dan did the frosting on this one!
Me with our masterpiece! They tasted as good as they look!
Posing with our cupcakes, in the lovely cupcake apron that Akiho gave me as a birthday present! I love Anthro's aprons; they're all so adorable.
Rows upon rows of s'more cupcakes. Some didn't come out as pretty-looking but they're still yummy!
A new household favorite! Will definitely be making them again.
Here’s the recipe without all the photos for anyone who’d like to print it out and try it themselves!
S’mores Cupcakes
(Note: I based my cupcakes on a recipe from Glory Albin of Glorious Treats, featured on Food Magazine. There are some slight variations and tweaks I made on mine, so feel free to follow either.)
The Chocolate Cupcakes:
Ingredients:
2 cups sugar
1 and 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
3/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1 and 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1 and 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
2 eggs
1 cup whole milk
1/2 cup vegetable oil
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 cup boiling water
Directions:
1. Line the cupcake cups with paper or aluminum liners. Heat oven to 350° F.
2. Stir together the dry ingredients – mix sugar, flour, cocoa, baking powder, baking soda and salt in large bowl.
3. Add the eggs, milk, oil and vanilla, and beat on medium speed with an electric mixer for 2 minutes. Stir in boiling water (batter will be watery but that is how it should be).
4. Fill liners approximately 2/3 – 3/4 full with batter.
5. Bake regular cupcakes for approximately. 22-24 minutes. Mini cupcakes for 13-16 minutes.
6. Cool completely on wire rack before frosting. (Makes approximately 24 standard size cupcakes.)
Marshmallow Frosting:
Ingredients:
2 large egg whites
1 cup sugar
6 tablespoons water
1 tablespoon light corn syrup
1/2 teaspoon cream of tartar
pinch of salt
1 cup miniature marshmallows
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
Directions:
1. In a large heat-proof bowl, combine the egg whites, sugar, water, corn syrup, cream of tartar and salt.
2. Set the bowl over (but not touching) simmering water in a saucepan and heat mixture, stirring constantly, until the sugar has dissolved and the mixture is very warm to the touch (about 160° F), about 3 minutes.
3. Remove the bowl from the saucepan. Using an electric mixer on medium-high speed, beat the mixture until soft peaks form, and it is still very warm, about 2 minutes.
4. Reduce mixer speed to low and add the marshmallows and vanilla. Continue beating until the marshmallows are melted and the frosting is completely smooth, about 3-4 minutes. Use frosting right away.
The Final Touches:
Ingredients:
2-3 large graham crackers
1 large chocolate candy bar (the ones that come in squares are easier to use): milk chocolate or dark chocolate, depending on your preference.
Directions:
1. Frost chocolate cupcakes with marshmallow frosting.
2. Top frosted cupcakes with a piece of graham cracker and a piece of chocolate.
If you know me, you know that one of my latest obsessions is cupcakes — more in terms of eating them, rather than making them (although I do enjoy trying my hand at a few cupcake recipes here and there).
So when I heard about Cupkates Truck from a friend recently, I was immediately intrigued. Cupkates Truck is a mobile cupcakery, and the very first “cupcake truck” in the whole Bay Area. They wander around Berkeley and Oakland selling delicious cupcakes straight from the truck (like a taco truck, except with cupcakes!) Their cupcakes are apparently baked fresh daily with local high-quality ingredients. Sounds like a winner to me! 🙂
We actually didn’t get a chance to try them until today, since aside from us being busy, the truck moves to a different location everyday and sells out promptly within a couple hours of arriving. You have to be on the ball to catch them before they’re out of cupcakes, especially on a weekend (which is really the only time we can get them, since we’re both at work when they’re out and about during the weekdays).
Let me tell you right now that Cupkates Truck is a slice of heaven that you will not want to miss out on. If you don’t believe me, here are some mouthwatering photos.
Today, the Cupkates Truck vending cupcakes in Elmwood.
Got my cupcakes! (Note: This photo of me is not one of the mouthwatering photos I was referring to... haha* Just keep scrolling down to see the good stuff.)
Cupkates packaging
Almost too cute to eat. But we ate them (of course).
S'mores cupcake. It really did taste as amazing as it looked.
Lemon Raspberry. Unfortunately, the frosting took a hit during the drive home so the tip is gone. The raspberry buttercream was too buttery and not fruity enough for my taste, but the lemon cake portion was pretty awesome even by itself.
Red Velvet. I'm a huge fan of red velvet, and this one did not disappoint. I took a bite and felt like I died and went to heaven. I didn't want to come back down.
I’m so glad that we were finally able to track down Cupkates Truck after stalking them on Twitter for quite some time now. Their cupcakes are definitely some of the best in the area, and have a great balance of seasonal/unique flavors and traditional (like double chocolate and double vanilla). You can follow them on Twitter or Facebook to see where they are daily, and look up their available flavors on their Menu. I know I will definitely be paying them another visit soon to get my cupcake fix.
