Are You There Blog? It's Me, Mir

Keeping a blog updated takes a lot of effort!  I like blogs with lots of pictures, so I want to post my own pics on this blog.  I've been in a bit of a hibernation mode (already!), thus no published posts in 3 months!  Without further ado, I'd like to share my love for Swiss Meringue Buttercream with you:


Don't you just love pretty food???

 


I finished my cake decorating class last Sunday and I am still no professional decorator.  Royal icing is supposed to be easier to work with, but if you don't make it properly, it will likely be too stiff.

My baker alter-ego experimented with different lemon cakes during the cake decorating classes (we had to bring baked cakes to 3 classes).  I discovered that Martha Stewart's cake recipes didn't work out for me.  I guess everyone has different cake preferences and her recipes turned out like dense pound cake, but I was looking for something light and fluffy.  I finally found the recipe on allrecipes.com.  My husband actually liked the Martha Stewart one, and not the fluffy chiffon cake.  Here are the cakes I decorated this fall (please lower your expecations ...):


 Moist Lemon Cake with Whipped Topping



Lemon Cake with Raspberry Filling and Almond Buttercream




Lemon Chiffon Cake with Lemon Curd Filling and Vanilla Buttercream

Luckily, my husband and I didn't have to eat all these cakes by ourselves.  We invited family over for intimate dinner parties.  My husband is taking a level 1 culinary course and every Sunday, he brings home enough food for 4 people.

My upcoming baking projects will be baking 8 dozen cookies for a cookie exchange at work (but first I gotta test drive some new recipes), and cupcakes for 5 holiday parties.  I think it's time to bring back the Green Tea Cupcake.  :)

The Best Thing I Ever Ate

I have been dying to share my recent food experience with everyone.  I bought these delectable vegetarian pockets called Murtabak from Absolute Bakery in Cabbagetown.


Mini Murtabak

My sister and her friend shared a large chicken Murtabak that was being made on the street.  The guy would take a 5-inch round of dough and turned it into paper-thin wrappers about 12-inch wide in a matter of seconds without any tools!
I didn't know what I was buying from the bakery because there were no labels.  After I tried a mini Murtabak, I returned to the bakery a couple hours later to buy several more to share with some colleagues.  The outside of the Murtabak is almost like roti, but very thin.  It is filled with a yummy mixture of seasoned potatoes and other vegetables (other versions include chicken or beef) and then pan fried.  I think Murtabaks originate from the Muslims, so they can also be found on the streets of Indonesia and Malaysia.  I'm salivating as I'm thinking about them ... :)

And For Dessert ...
In my baker life, I made banana cupcakes with chocolate frosting yesterday.  I used a banana muffin recipe from allrecipes.com that yields a light and fluffy muffin.  Since I didn't have a lot of time yesterday, I had to open my emergency Duncan Hines jar of frosting from the pantry.  ;)  It's aaaall good!


Banana Cupcakes with Chocolate Frosting



The Essence of Mir

My latest obsessions:

EARL GREY TEA
I used to hate it because of the bergamot, but now I love it!  My new favourite AM pick-me-up :)

RED COSMETICS

My fingernails and toenails are painted bright red.  Why not?  (It's hotter than blue or green.  What's up with that???)  Today, I even put on bright red lipstick.  I'm feelin' bold (or old).  I even bought a tiger print top a week ago ... oh crap, do I smell like a cougar???

BOOT CAMP

It takes place twice a week in the sketchiest park in TO, but that's part of the fun.  Watching pot-heads and trannies frolicking in the park.  The smell of weed as I'm lunging.  Should I watch that barefoot man throw his boot up in the tree or continue doing burpees?  Just when we thought we had seen it all, a man 20 feet away from us was throwing knives at a tree today.  Any other exercise would be boring compared with this.

BELLYDANCING

What more can I say?  It's so much fun!

ARUGULA & TUNA SALAD
I made this for lunch yesterday and today and it was sooooo good!!!  I was literally 2 inches from the plate as I shovelled the salad into my mouth in 5 minutes.  I don't bring a camera to work, so this is the closest picture I could find to my dish. 

Arugula, tuna, and bean salad

2 handfuls of "aroogoola"
8 grape tomatoes, cut in half
1 tablespoon goat cheese (I used 1/3 cup of gruyere cheese yesterday)
1 can of Clover Leaf yellowfin tuna in olive oil
2 tablespoons of homemade balsamic vinaigrette

Layer ingredients on a plate.  Grab a fork.  Position your mouth 2 inches from the salad.  Shovel.

My Little Bakeshop

My friends seem most interested in my baking projects, so I will share my latest one.  For the company BBQ, I ended up making chocolate chip cupcakes with vanilla buttercream frosting.

Chocolate Chip Cupcakes with Vanilla Buttercream

This Martha Stewart recipe was a lot more effort than I initially thought it would be.  The cupcake turned out a little more like a pound cake, despite folding in beaten egg whites into the cake batter.  My cupcakes are usually soft & moist.  I brought only 2 dozen cupcakes to the BBQ and I didn't see any left over.

I didn't end up baking lemon meringue cupcakes for my boss because I spent most of my Sunday baking a Black Forest Cake for my mother-in-law's birthday.  It didn't work out the way I wanted to.  First of all, I used silicone cake pans and totally forgot to grease/flour them before pouring batter into them.  So the cake stuck to the pan.  Not giving up, I carefully scraped the cakes out of the pans.  With the two thin layers of cake, I slopped on the cherry pie filling and whipped cream.  To make a long story short, it was quite an ugly cake (hence, no pictures of it here!).  I was running out of time and my hubby wrote "happy birthday" with a store-bought icing tube.  Since it didn't have enough time to chill and it was hot day, the cake was leaning to one side and the "happy birthday" was running off the cake by the time we served it.  (It was horrendous!!!)  Oh, well.  I hope she appreciated the thought.  :|  I thought it tasted pretty good.  I have made my recipe corrections for my next attempt at Black Forest Cake.

Next Saturday we're celebrating four birthdays at my aunt's house.  hmmm ... what would Brian Boitano make?  (One of my favourite Food Network shows)  I think I will attempt the hamburger cupcakes.

A Day in the Life of a Foodie

Aside from my usual smoothie for breakfast followed with a mid-morning snack, I had the best food day today!

My lunches are never boring.  You'll never catch me eating a ham & cheese sandwich (maybe the occasional salad with whatever scraps I can find in my fridge & pantry).  So for lunch, I had a grilled veggie sandwich with goat cheese.  Last night, my hubby grilled red peppers, zucchinis, and eggplant.  We sandwiched them up in a toasted panini bun with goat cheese.  YUM-MIRS!

Tonight, we had a late dinner at Terroni's new spin-off, La Bettola on the corner of Richmond & Adelaide (formerly Sushi Man).  I dunno if we were hungry or a little tipsy from the wine, but dinner was DEE-LISH!!!  We started off with deep-fried zucchini flowers stuffed with ricotta.  I've always wanted to try this dish and it was awesome.  :)  Then we shared a pizza with parmesan, stracciatella cheese, arugula and cherry tomatoes.  The crust was perfection - thin, light, and crisp.  The finale to our meal was Terroni's handmade gelato - chocolate hazelnut.  m-mmm ... :)

No, my day didn't stop there.  I had some leftover corn-on-the-cob from last night's bbq, and very ripe avocados.  I combined these ingredients with tomatoes, coriander, spring onion, lemon juice, and S&P and made a SICK salad for lunch tomorrw.  It ROCKS!

A Domestic Goddess in the Urban Jungle

Moving downtown wasn't totally my idea, but I went with it and I'm loving it.  My Saturday morning routine is hitting the St. Lawrence farmer's market to buy fresh eggs, veggies, and bread.  If I don't feel inspired to cook dinner, I have a plethora of restaurants to choose from: Thai, Italian, bar, upscale pub, Japanese ... but that dilemma happens only about once a week. 

I can't help but to think about food almost all the time.  I have Food Network to blame for that.  There aren't many FN shows that I don't like - maybe Restaurant Makeover (it's on ALL THE TIME) and Eat, Shrink, and Be Merry.  I have to work out at least twice a week or else buy new clothes!!

This past weekend was a long weekend, so I was in the kitchen prepping to go to a couple of dinner parties.  I wanted to share my summer trifle with everyone.  I used Jell-O instant vanilla pudding a couple of weeks ago, but I thought I would try to make it scratch.  I dusted off a pastry cream recipe from the baking course I took last fall.  The directions weren't very clear, so I followed the directions from a Vanilla Bean Pastry Cream recipe from foodnetwork.com but used the proportions from the original recipe.  The result was very thick and not too sweet.  It reminded me of the tapioca pudding from dim sum.  Anyways, here is a picture of the result:

My Summer Trifle

I used store-bought pound cake, drizzled it with vanilla almond milk, then added a layer of the vanilla pudding (if you look closely, you'll see vanilla beans in the pudding), then spread mixed fruit (raspberries, blackberries, strawberries, blueberries, and peaches) on top of the pudding.  I repeated the layers and then finished with real whipped cream sweetened with vanilla sugar (of course I re-used the vanilla pods!).  I have to admit, it was pretty dee-lish, but who doesn't like trifle?

I've got a lot of baking to do this week.  Boss' birthday is at the end of this week and she loves lemon desserts.  So I'm going to attempt Lemon Meringue cupcakes.  (At work, I'm known as the Cupcake Queen.)  The company BBQ is on Saturday with the spouses and the kiddies.  I'd like to make my Green Tea Cupcakes for the grown-ups, but what shall I make for the kiddies?

Gumdrop Cupcakes (a la Martha Stewart)?

(http://www.marthastewart.com/recipe/gumdrop-cupcakes)

Cookie Monster Cupcakes?

(http://goodthingscatered.blogspot.com/2009/04/cookie-monster-cupcakes.html)

or

Cheeseburger Cupcakes?

(http://www.flickr.com/photos/katedw/3489933430/in/set-72157617528706606/)