“Similarly Flawless” Apple Crumble

Milena’s Cooking Adventures

I’m in Denmark again (yes, no one can keep track of where I am, least of all myself), visiting my family and a very cute Danish boy I happen to be going on accidental 6-hour hikes with. :3 I know full well that, although I am welcome in my brother’s household, it is best to pay rent. Copenhagen ain’t cheap, you know. And rent, in this case, involves baking as much as possible. Someone’s gotta bring home the chocolate chip cookies. They aren’t gonna bake themselves. Continue reading “Similarly Flawless” Apple Crumble

Mimosa is more than just a drink!

From Sunaina’s Kitchen

Aaaaaaand we’re back! Milena and I have been traveling, so we haven’t had time to post in a while. I was attending a friend’s wedding in the Bay Area and then a family wedding in India. But, at last, I’m back in Hawai’i and I baked something new!

I made a mimosa cake for my auntie’s birthday this weekend. Did you know that a mimosa is more than just something millennials drink by the bucketful at brunch? It’s also a flower, which was probably what the drink is named after. The cake the I baked is also named after this flower:

Flower Yellow Flower Nature Yellow Provence Mimosa
Public domain: https://www.maxpixel.net/Flower-Yellow-Flower-Nature-Yellow-Provence-Mimosa-2081990

Mimosa cakes are an Italian dessert. According to NPR, and also Manuela Zangara (the author of the recipe that I used), mimosas are the symbol of the “Festa della donna” (International Women’s Day) in Italy. Men are supposed to give women mimosa flowers, and often people make this cake to celebrate. The festival happens on March 8, when mimosa flowers are in bloom. Their cheery yellow color also celebrates spring. It was just good timing that I made a cake that celebrates women at the same time as the Kavanaugh hearings were going on (ughughugh). It’s also a pretty complicated bugger, so I would not recommend attempting it unless you have some cake baking experience.

Continue reading Mimosa is more than just a drink!

Traveller’s Notes

Milena’s Adventures

I’m currently travelling around Europe with my twin brother, and so today’s post is a conglomeration of different snapshots rather than a recipe.

Some vignettes from the last few weeks…

  1. My niece’s birthday cake! She turned 6 right after the whole family adopted two wonderful kittens, so the cake was kitten-themed. Her mother and I worked together to make the cake (and my other niece made the black cat’s body!)
    the culprits in action
  2. Chocolate chip cookies cookies cookies cookies cookies (that I then froze). Check out Sunaina’s Quest for Chocolate Chip Cookies for her own thoughts on the thin chocolate chip cookie (mine were chunky and a little too round for my liking from having been in the freezer)!
  3. Balloon flowers! (Somehow I remembered how to make balloon things…)

     

  4. Piroshki and some very silly hedgie wine!
  5. Leftover piroshki filling made into fried potato-cakes with sriracha-chili mayonnaise dip
  6. Sherry banana bread muffins with raisins
    we are good and boozy
  7. The dear friends who are travelling with me 🙂

    (I made this tiny little one because my friend handed me yarn and a crochet hook, but for a crocheted octopus of your own, check out Kisses or Stitches on Etsy)

    Happy travels, wherever you may be!
    brekkiesprout

Searching for the Perfect Chocolate Chip Cookie Part 2

From Sunaina’s Kitchen

Today, I attempted to find the perfect chocolate chip cookie again. I’m looking for something thin and crispy, and thin and crispy all the way through. I tried the Martha Stewart’s recipe from her website (original recipe here). I really liked it, and the cookies meet my qualifications, but I’m not sure if I would call them perfect. I’m still thinking about Alton Brown’s thin and crispy chocolate chip cookies, which I tried last week. Even though his cookies weren’t crispy all the way through, they really tasted good. I’m attributing this to the milk in the recipe. I think it added a vanilla, and perhaps even floral, note. Usually, cookies don’t have milk, but sometimes recipes call for it or water to make the cookies flatter. I’ve read that milk makes cookies soft, however, and these cookies were indeed quite soft. Later, I might try to invent a recipe with this nice vanilla flavor but remains crispy all the way through….

The cookies I made today were quite good too. Because of the increased amount of sugar and perhaps butter (in relation to Alton Brown’s recipe), they had a really nice caramel flavor. In order to bring this flavor out, you have to make sure to bake them long enough. Otherwise, the taste falls a little flat (har har). They need to be well-browned, not just golden brown. Don’t go by the pictures, as I’ve brightened and filtered the hell out of them.

Continue reading Searching for the Perfect Chocolate Chip Cookie Part 2

Searching for the Perfect Chocolate Chip Cookie…

From Sunaina’s Kitchen

This is the beginning of my journey to finding the perfect chocolate chip cookie! It seems appropriate to start with chocolate chip cookies, because they seem to be a basic recipe of American baking. They’re also one of my favorite things and one of the first baked goods I learned how to make.

I get obsessive about baking one thing perfectly once and a while, and the time seems to have come around again. Three years ago, I baked seven genoise cakes over the course of several weeks to figure out how to do it well (it was really hard). We’ll see how many tries it takes this time…

Everyone has a different chocolate chip cookie ideal–soft, chewy, or crispy? Thick or thin? And in which combination? My personal favorite is thin and crispy. Unfortunately, most recipes that I’ve encountered don’t do this. They’re usually not crispy, crispy only on the edge but not in the middle, or too thick. Today, I tried Alton Brown’s “The Thin” chocolate chip cookie recipe. I’ve never made it before, so I wasn’t quite sure what to expect.

Continue reading Searching for the Perfect Chocolate Chip Cookie…

Sunless Skies Kickstarter Cake

Milena’s Cooking Adventures

Sailing in the black void, accompanied only by the humming sound of your own failing engines, you see one distant piercing light. Could it be salvation? Your crew, gaunt and mutinous, eye you hungrily. The violent thoughts you sense in their gaze send a shudder down your spine. Your ship’s light flickers, then fails, and your heart leaps in the hope that the faraway light is another ship, a lighthouse, a desperate beacon of deliverance. You approach as your fuel drains away, making guttural noises in the dark, drifting ever more slowly forwards. Suddenly, fear grips like a vice over your heart, as all becomes clear. One giant glowing eye rises from the watery abyss. This is no lighthouse. It is death.

Sunless Sea is not a computer game known for its kindness to players. A vast dark map, set in a claustrophobic underground cavern, is the playing field for your tiny vessel, which navigates such horrors as cannibalism, bloody secret rituals, monstrous sentient icebergs, crimson nightmares, sacrificial victims, drugged dreams of chitinous insects, and violent corrupt courts ready at a second’s notice to tear you limb from limb. The gameplay is frustrating. Without a physical notebook by your side, keeping track of quests is nigh impossible. Your “Terror” bar is always on the rise, and when it hits the maximum, your character careens into permanent insanity. When you drift too far in the black ocean, to die alone and afraid, you stay dead. You must start over.

Naturally I thought this all was an excellent theme for a cake. 🙂

Continue reading Sunless Skies Kickstarter Cake

The Fry Up Police: A Gladiatorial Battle

Milena’s Cooking Adventures

The internet– which you must know because here you all are, on it– is a terrible place. It’s insulting, disappointing, petty, ugly. And that’s why I like The Fry Up Police. In an online world of hatred, swearing, infighting, and incredibly irritating memes, this group stands as a shining beacon of love, support, and welcoming comradery amidst the chaos.

Just kidding.

Continue reading The Fry Up Police: A Gladiatorial Battle

The Best White Russian: A Mistake

Milena’s Cooking Adventures

Before I start: I don’t have a name for this drink yet besides BEAUTIFUL MISTAKE. If you have a name suggestion, please post it in the comments!

A few years ago, I got a new bartender set for free. It had all sorts of shiny things in it: a shaker, a muddler, and many other contraptions ending in -er that I hadn’t ever seen before. Me being me, I decided to use it for everything in my life. For a little while there, every drink I had needed extra mint leaves, just so I could muddle them. I shook drinks that never should have been shaken, adding in way too many ice cubes and shaking so long my fingers lost feeling. I am nothing if not over-enthusiastic. Most of the drinks were… undrinkable. But my enthusiasm finally paid off, when one day I made my favourite drink. Continue reading The Best White Russian: A Mistake

Pel’meni and Blini

Milena’s Cooking Adventures

As some of you know, I’ve been studying Russian for (mumbledymumble) number of years (it’s more impressive if you think I just started…). Besides Cheburashka and other adorable Russian cartoons, the most exciting aspect of learning the language for me has been exploring Russian cuisine, a kind of cooking that– I thought– was completely unfamiliar to me. But as I started researching recipes and learning some of the staple flavours of Russian cooking (mmmm dill), it suddenly started to seem pretty familiar. Continue reading Pel’meni and Blini