I was having cravings for some matcha-flavored dessert last night, so Dan and I made matcha tiramisu! We’d never made it before, so it was an undertaking — we made the filling, syrup, and even the ladyfingers from scratch! (Usually, you can buy ladyfingers readymade for making regular tiramisu, but we were too lazy to go out and get them. It was also because we wanted to make the ladyfinger spongy layer green tea-flavored too, and ladyfingers don’t come in green tea flavors.)
This was my first time actively making baking/cooking in the kitchen in a couple months, and I was still feeling pretty queasy, so Dan helped a lot — it was a collaborative effort! 🙂
The results came out pretty good! Although since I have a taste aversion to eggs, and the recipe we used called for a lot of eggs for both the ladyfingers sponge and the filling, it was a little too egg-y/custard-y for my taste. Dan gobbled it up, though! Maybe I’ll try a recipe that uses less egg next time.
Layers of green tea ladyfingers and filling, dusted with green tea powder on top.
I've missed my cakestands! This was a good excuse to pull one of them out again...
It’s gotten drastically colder here this past week. It was cold all summer in the Bay Area, and last week we were finally getting some really hot days in the 90s, but now we’re back to freezing temperatures. It’s days like this that are perfect for staying indoors with cups of tea (or hot chocolate!) and chicken pot pies…
Unfortunately, the mere sight and smell of chicken — or any meat for that matter — turns my stomach these days. 🙁 I used to make these mini chicken pot pies with puff pastry shells — they’re super easy to make! When will I get to enjoy you guys again…?
Believe it or not, one of the things I miss most about college is the food. Meals at university dining halls may not seem so inspiring to most, and of course Virginia Tech had its own share of unsavory cafeteria meals. But we have West End Market, which makes up for it all. Serving up steak by the ounce, fresh lobster, gourmet soups & salads and mouthwatering wraps, it is hands down the most popular dining center on campus. Built relatively recently in 1999, it has since received several awards, most recently earning Virginia Tech the title of No.1 Best Campus Food in the United States in the 2010 edition of The Princeton Review! You read right, NUMBER ONE in the nation, bitches.
The dish I miss most from West End Market is without question the London Broil. It’s marinated just right, cooked to perfection, and the mushroom sauce that it’s topped with harmonizes so well with the steak. I still suffer from cravings for it, three years after graduating from Tech. I’ve talked to some other alumni and it appears that this is a common condition that hits during post-college life. I just do not have the same luxury that most of them do to make the 4-5 hour drive down from DC to quench such cravings every so often, since I am now on the opposite side of the country from my beloved London Broil.
The other day, as I was daydreaming once again about those moist, tender cuts of steak, I got curious and tried doing a search to see if there was a recipe out there to replicate West End’s signature London Broil. Sure enough, there was. I nearly peed my pants with excitement! I scurried off to the supermarket to gather the ingredients and set to work on preparing my favorite college meal. Instead of marinating for 3-4 hours as the recipe instructed, I let the steak soak in the marinade overnight to make sure the flavors really sank in. Also, we don’t have a gas grill that we can use, so we had to improvise in the way that we cooked the steak — I seared them a couple minutes on each side on the stove, then stuck them in the oven for approximately 7 minutes.
London Broil out of the oven, ready to be carved.
The mushroom sauce... I made a little too much.
Pouring the sauce onto the steak....
Ready to be devoured.
…and devour it I did. To tell the truth, I was a little disappointed. The London Broil itself came out pretty good, although it probably could have been better had it been cooked on an actual grill. I think the failure was mainly in the mushroom sauce. I’m not sure if the recipe has it all wrong or if the type of teriyaki sauce I bought was too strong, but all I could taste was teriyaki, and it kind of ruined the London Broil altogether. Absent were the flavorful notes and subtle mushroom taste that I had loved so much in West End’s London Broil. It just wasn’t the same. And so my quest for West End’s London Broil continues. If one of you Hokies out there has mastered how to recreate this nostalgic dish, please share your recipe with me! Because if I don’t find a way soon, I may just have to kidnap one of the cooks at J.P.’s Chop House at West End to personally make it for me….
P.S. This was the 100th blog post on our blog! I’m personally impressed with myself that I’ve been able to consistently stick with this blogging project thusfar. Truth be told, it’s me blogging 95% of the time and Dan only 5%, so I’m not sure if you can really call it a couple’s blog… ::sigh:: Gotta step it up, hubby!
I’ve had all sorts of cobblers before, most of which have been fruit-based — peach cobbler, blueberry cobbler, apple cobbler, cherry cobbler… all delicious. But I’d never heard of chocolate cobbler until I saw this Tasty Kitchen blog post (a cooking community founded and led by The Pioneer Woman, whom I mentioned previously) come through on my Google Reader earlier this month. I was immediately intrigued by the idea and was determined to try it, especially when my chocolate cravings struck today.
Here is the mouthwatering result:
My first chocolate cobbler!
The recipe, which you can find here, is surprisingly simple! The ingredients are very basic and are things that you normally have already stocked in your pantry — I didn’t have to make an extra trip to the grocery store or anything. The steps went super quickly, and the batter was ready to go into the oven in ten minutes!
What is at first alarming about the recipe is that you create the main cake batter, then pile on a mix of sugar and light brown sugar, and then pour hot tap water on top, and then stick it in the oven without stirring it. Sounds crazy, doesn’t it? I thought that there must be some missing step or misprint in the recipe, but the blog post assured that this was how it was supposed to be, so I trusted them despite my reservations as I uneasily stuck this visually unappealing mixture into the oven.
All watery and muddy-looking on the top. Doesn't look too appetizing, does it?
Somehow, 40 minutes later when you take it out of the oven, the liquidy portion has sunk into the inside and the top has set in a cakey layer. It’s like magic! (Or some science to baking that I can’t quite grasp.)
Out of the oven.
Smells pretty good!
Breaking open the top of the cobbler to find the chocolate oozing out.
The chocolate filling is still steaming when I break the surface. (It's similar to those molten chocolate lava cakes in that sense.)
Enjoying some chocolate cobbler for dessert!
Dan described it as a “liquid brownie” when he took his first few bites, and then when the cake mixed more with the syrupy filling, he said it started tasting like pudding. He couldn’t get enough of it and ended up eating about a third of the cobbler! 😮
It was delicious (although admittedly indulgent) and the best part is that it’s so easy to make with on-hand ingredients. Big thanks to Tasty Kitchen for such a great recipe! Dan and I were talking about how we want to try our hand at some fruit cobblers too! We’ll let you know how that goes…
This past weekend, Dan and I made those fabulous s’mores cupcakes for some friends again, and although our cupcakes went quickly, we had half a bag of mini marshmallows left over. I was eating them out of the bag after dinner tonight, wishing that there was some way to get that delicious toasted flavor… and that’s when I stumbled upon this awesome idea:
Toasting mini marshmallows in the comfort of our own home.
Seriously, Dan and I both sat at our dining table repeatedly roasting and popping these for about ten minutes straight. All the while, I raved on and on about how brilliant I was for coming up with the idea.
