Happy Valentine's Day

Happy Valentine's Day to you!  It's time to indulge chocolate dipped strawberries!  However, I am not a big fan of chocolate so we'll just eat the strawberries without the chocolate ok?

We celebrated the Valentine's Day a little early this year as my morning routine normally involves rush rush rush during the weekday.  So on Sunday, I made my favorite heart shaped breakfast for the men (hubby & son) in my life.  It's actually very easy, just need to have couple of cookie cutters which I have plenty from my previous cookie making obsession that didn't last very long lol!

Bacon, pineapple, kiwi, bread, and egg in the middle!

Made it with a pressed cookie cutter

For Valentine's Day eve, I made black pepper sauce ribeye steak dinner, completed with asparagus, mashed potato, and homemade TangZhong dinner rolls.  Both hubby and son cleaned their plates!

See how soft and fluffy the TangZhong roll is

Steak with black pepper sauce

This morning, I some how managed to have few minutes, so I quickly made some more heart shaped breakfast for my son.  He sure loves it!

Egg, orange slice, turkey and ham sandwich!

Tonight, we plan to make another heart shaped dinner, maybe I'll post some more pictures tomorrow!  It's nice to be able to go out for candlelight dinner.  However, when you have a kid with bedtime at 7:30, it's really not much you can do.  Since I do enjoy cooking, I guess these will have to do for now.  It's also very rewarding when your kid's face light up after seeing the heart shaped cute breakfast that mommy made just for him!  You can even hand the cookie cutters to the kids and have them help out!  Enjoy your Valentine's Day!

White Chocolate Cocoa Pebbles Baseball Treats

I finally have another chance to try making more cookies.  I've been wanting to make more cookies so I can try decorating them and I was so happy when I saw it was my kid's turn to bring snacks to school this Thursday.  I was torn between making Halloween theme cookies and the rice krispie treats.  So I asked my son what he'd like.  He said rick krispie treats.  Here we are with White Chocolate Cocoa Pebbles Baseball Treats.  The original recipe was adapted from Cookies and Cups.  I really like her creative ideas and her wonderful decorated cookies.  I am not as good as she is but I hope at least my kid and her friends would appreciate the snacks that I made for them.  My son even stayed up late because he wanted to help decorating the cookies.  Did I mention that this is my first time making icing, decorating a cookie with piping bag, tips and all that.  It didn't even cross my mind what if I fail piping the stitches.  I am glad it turn out ok even though not perfect.  But at least you can tell these are baseballs right?...I meant...you can right?  Please tell me that you can! 

I used the cocoa pebbles krispie treats recipe that I made the Spiders and Owls.  I tripled the batch to have enough for 25 cookies.  I also found out, if you are running short, you can actually put the scraps together in the mold and pressed it tight.  I got 3 cookies out of scraps.  Since I didn't have any white candy melts, I used white chocolate instead.  To achieve the smooth consistency, I added 1/2 ts veg oil to the melted white chocolate.  I did half batch with and half batch without the oil (the first half batch I didn't think about it).  The 2nd half batch was much easier to coat the cookies as the white chocolate is much smoother. 

White Chocolate Cocoa Pebbles Baseball Treats

Ingredients

25 Cocoa Pebbles Treats cookies
5 oz white chocolate melted (I use Ghirardelli classic white choc chips)
1C Meringue Powder Buttercream icing with red food coloring (I also added 2 drops of lemon extract in the icing, it smells wonderful)

Directions

I made the cocoa pebbles treats, let it cool, cut up, covered with white chocolate.  Then I let these dry over night.  On the 2nd night, I mix the red coloring into meringue powder buttercream and try piping for the first time.  I thin down the icing with 1 TB of water while I was mixing color into it.  It just seems a little bit too thick to me.  It looks more for covering the cake rather than be using in the piping bag.  Then I used the trick that I learned from Karen's cookies by putting icing on a piece of plastic wrap then into the piping bag.  It's a lot easier than fill the piping bag with icing and much easier clean up too.  I piped on the 2 lines first for all cookies then go back and add the stitching details.  It was easier as the first 2 lines were already dry.  I didn't have to worry about mess it up while adding the stitches.  Well, they weren't perfect as Cookies and Cups' but hey it's my first time piping and I think it was OK.

Cocoa Pebbles with white chocolate

Lines added

Finished baseballs

Cocoa Pebbles Treats

It's probably not a good idea to change hobby but hobby is a hobby right?  Thinking about the recent years, I went from making Bucilla Xmas stockings to jewelry making to the latest - cookie making/decorating!  I know my son would definitely enjoy my new hobby than the previous ones.  So I left work early to have anniversary lunch with hobby at Pierponts at KC Union Station.  The food was decent and prices seem reasonable as well.  Maybe we were there for lunch so it wasn't as expensive as we expected.  I happened to have a Groupon that I bought few weeks ago.  We ordered Calamari, fried steak, coffee & ancho sirloin, ice tea and still have money left for a dessert.  Hubby suggested ordering a creme brulee to go.  I went home and my boy just came back from school.  He was hungry.  So he ate part of his daddy's fried steak and the creme brulee for dessert.  I asked him to give me a bite, he said no, it's mine!  I guess the creme brulee was very good!  He did share with grandpa though, grandpa is always his favorite person!

Since I was totally in the cookie making mode.  I picked up my daughter and went for shopping.  First we stopped by Hobby Lobby and picked up the Hello Kitty cookie cutter.  I plan to make some Hello Kitty cookies for my baby girl's first birthday.  Then we headed to Michaels to check out more baking items as I have some 40% off coupons!  I found a circle cookie cutter set, some popsicle sticks, and a Halloween mini cookie cutter set.  Of course, I won't be using them all at once but I do plan to use them in the coming weeks!  We also stopped by grocery store to pick up some necessary items that I needed to make the cocoa pebbles treats for.  One thing that completely escaped my mind was that I was supposed to pick up my son an hour ago before my shopping ended.  I called and was relief that my husband had already picked him up from his afternoon trip with grandpa.

The recipe for the Cocoa Pebbles Treats was adapted from Cookies and Cups.  Of course I don't have everything that I needed i.e. tootsie rolls (never liked them).  I used giant pink marshmallow for the fangs and beaks.  You can see them in the pictures.  I also don't feel like making so much sugar item at one time as normally only my son and I would eat the sweets that's not in form of cakes in my house.  So I halved the recipe and came up with 7 cookies.  I made 4 spiders and 3 owls.  I also made 2 little stars out of the scraps and put them in a sandwich bag with a note that said - "You are my super star, I love you!  Mommy" for my son.  I left it at his seat on the dinning table so he would see that when he sits down for breakfast.  Of course that made his morning

Monday night, we made some homemade Leeks and Pork dumplings for dinner.  As usual that we used store bought wrappers.  But we had some extra filling left.  My dad mentioned it'd be nice if my mom was here so she could make some wrappers.  I think to myself, why not?  So I dig out my mom's recipes and found there's one for dumpling wrappers.  I cut the recipe down to 1/4 and that was just enough for the fillings that we had left.  Here's a picture of them after cooked!

Chinese Dumpling Wrapper

Ingredient:
4 C of all purpose flour
2C of water
1 ts salt

Instruction:
Mix all in a big bowl.  Knead until a dough ball form.  There shouldn't be any flour left in the bowl, flour shouldn't stick to hands nor the bowl.  Dough itself looks smooth.  Cover and let it rest for 30 mins to 1 hour.  On lightly floured surface roll the dough into 1/2-3/4 inch thick stick.  I only work on dough a little at a time and keep the rest covered.  Once the stick is formed, cut it with a butter knife or dough cutter into 1/2 inch.  Roll the 1/2 inch dough into ball and press down.  Using rolling pin to roll them into circles.  Make sure you keep dust some flour on them so they don't stick together.  You can either cover them with a kitchen towel while you roll out the rest or make dumplings as you go.  I made the dumplings as I go to avoid having to cover them or dry out.

Heart attack weekend

We had a fun and busy Labor Day weekend.  It's a long weekend yet it felt so short when it's over.  We didn't go anywhere on Saturday.  We stayed home and I cleaned the house, made some BBQ chicken and cornmeal muffin.  The cornmeal muffins that I made last time was so good so I decided to make it again but only use half of the recipe so we don't have too many leftover.  One mistake I made...I cut everything in half but forgot to cut the sugar in half.  The result...equally delicious but more like a dessert cornmeal muffins.

Sunday we planned to visit a restaurant that we've never been to in KCMO downtown area but the restaurant wasn't opened (we assumed it wasn't as no one answered the phone when we called).  So we ended up going to Stroud's which is another restaurant that we've never been.  Stroud's is famous for its pan fried chicken.  They started back in 1936.  The meal includes the chicken dish, 2 sides, a soup or salad, and cinnamon buns.  We ordered chicken fried chicken, chicken platter (wing, thigh, leg, breast).  The sides were fries, cottage fries, and green beans.  We also got a soup and a salad to share between 4 of us.  The chicken was crispy and juice.  It also doesn't have any fat like you normally would see in other fried chicken.  It's pretty tasty but not salty enough (we also usually eat pretty low in sodium).  It's different than the regular fried chicken I'd say.  The price is a bit high for fried chicken but it's like a special treat so once in awhile I think it's ok.

Chicken noodle soup, pretty yummy

Green beans, nothing special even it has meat in it.

Chicken Fried Chicken, pretty good

Cottage Fries

Fried Chickens, wing, leg, thigh, and breast

On Monday I made some BBQ ribs as a farewell to the summer.  I marinated the ribs over night with my own creation of seasonings (see recipe below).  Then I put it in crockpot on low for 4 hours.  It cooked while kids and I were out shopping.  I came home and saw it is about done and moved it to the grill for 20 mins or so while brushing more BBQ sauce on it.  It turns out pretty well, meat is tender and juice, flavor is pretty well too.

BBQ Rib

Seasoning:
1 TB fresh minced ginger
3 cloves garlic (minced)
2 TBS Mrs Dash or your own favorite seasoning 
2 TBS grounded coriander
1 TS cayenne pepper
1 TB dried bayleaf

Mix garlic and ginger, rub it on the ribs
Mix the rest of the seasonings, rub it on the ribs eventually, make sure you coat both sides
Leave the ribs in a covered container over night in the refrigerator.

On the day of grilling
Take the ribs out of the refrigerator and put it under boiler for 10 mins per side (450 F) so it browns on both sides.  Then move the ribs to the crockpot for high 2 hours or low 4-5 hours.

In the crockpot add the following on top of ribs
1/2 cup of water or stock (I use water)
1 bottle of your favorite BBQ sauce (I use Baby Ray Honey BBQ sauce)
1/2 C - 1 C of ketchup

Grilling - prepare grill medium low then grill the ribs for 15-20 mins per side while brushing more bbq sauce on it.  Dig in!

Megan's first "meaty" meal

My mom kept suggesting to start my daughter in real food.  Which means, not just the veggies and fruit puree that she's been eating.  She wants her granddaughter to eat meat, veggies, and rice!  So here we have the pork rib rice porridge.  Since I don't have any rice already cooked, I made the rice porridge in the rice cooker with some sweet potato.  Then I cook pork rib soup with corns (for us).  Once both are done, I picked out 3 small pieces of meat and chopped them up.  I put the meat into the rice sweet potato porridge and added some finely chopped leafy green and cooked it for another 10 mins or so.  I let it cool a little bit and gave Megan a little bit to taste.  She seemed really like it.  Even I tried, it's still too much porridge that she won't be able to finish all in 2 days.  So I put them in Baby Bullet's freezer container and freeze them!  I really think that I made a good decision on buying the baby bullet system.  It's pretty handy!

Pork rib rice porridge in baby bullet freezer tray

Rice porridge (left), peach pear puree (right) in baby bullet mini cups