Coconut Mocha Cupcakes!

A couple of months ago my friend was on a gluten free diet and I bought some shredded coconut to make him cupcakes. After I opened the bag, I realized I needed UNsweetened coconut so off to the back of the cupboard the bag went. Recently, I was looking for a new recipe to try, and low and behold I found this recipe for Coconut Mocha Cupcakes! http://sweetpeaskitchen.com/2014/03/coconut-mocha-cupcakes/

I followed the recipe pretty much to the T, although I did not have any buttermilk so I had to make my own (1 TBSP vinegar and then filled to 1 cup with milk as shown here.) and I did not have any coconut extract so I just omitted it.  I also did not pour the batter into a measuring cup, but instead decided to spoon each into the cupcake holder using an ice cream scoop (this means uniform cupcakes, YAY!). Now I'm not quite sure what happened, but I managed to get 18 regular sized cupcakes & 48 mini cupcakes out of the recipe!! This works out for me as I planned on taking some to work & then the rest I will leave for my mom to take with her to work. However, if you're planning on just making some for yourself, be warned!

My oven bakes hot, so for the regular sized cupcakes I baked them for 17 minutes, while the mini cupcakes I baked for 8. Both times worked well for me, and when I inserted the toothpick they all came out clean. The recipe calls for cooling the cupcakes in the pan for 10 minutes and then removing them to a wire rack until they have cooled completely.

For the frosting I ALWAYS end up with extra frosting for some reason, so this time I decided to cut the recipe in half. I did forget I was halving it in the last step, and added 3 TBSP of coffee. This resulted in a strong coffee flavor, which I liked. Halving the frosting recipe produced EXACTLY the right amount of frosting, which was a little too close for comfort. (although there was still some frosting on the spatula I used & some of the mini cupcakes got skimpy frosting)

If I were to make these cupcakes again (although I probably won't, not because they didn't taste good, but because I'm not a huge coconut fan), I would definitely try toasting the coconut so that the coconut inside the cupcakes weren't as chewy... not a fan of that kind of texture!! Overall, the cupcakes turned out pretty good, rich chocolate cupcakes with a hint of coconut (although you could definitely tell there was coconut based on the texture) and coffee. I really liked the frosting which wasn't too sweet but instead had a nice chocolate/coffee flavor. I will probably come back to the frosting, but try a different type of chocolate cupcake!

Sticky Asian Pork

Dinner for April 3rd:

 Sticky Asian Pork.

Sticky "Asian" Pork

     This recipe was found on Foodgawker.com which is one of my favorite recipe websites. The actual recipe can be found at http://mygoldenpear.com/2014/03/02/sticky-asian-pork/. 

     I deviated a bit from the original recipe because I don't care to eat onions. So instead of chopping the onion very small, I left them in slightly larger pieces so I could easily pick them out. I also did not add the chili flakes as I don't care for spicy food. The recipe turned out a lot lighter in color than the recipe picture, but I don't think that it tasted bad. It sort of tasted like the peanut pork you would get at a thai restaurant but with a sweeter onion flavor. I also used clementines (or cuties!) instead of an orange because that was what i had on hand, this may have added to the sweet flavor, instead of maybe the tangy orange flavor? The next time I make this dish, I think I would reduce the onion to 1/2 onion (instead of the whole onion) and then add some garlic and fish sauce to round out the flavors a little bit. The recipe also called for 2 TBSP of crunchy peanut butter but I only had extra crunchy and smooth. I did 1 1/2 TBSP extra crunchy and then 1/2 TBSP creamy. I may add 1 TBSP creamy and 1 TBSP extra crunchy the next time to add more of a peanut-y flavor. Overall, I think that it was a good recipe & I will try to make it again. It was a good 'throw together' dish as the pork does not need to be marinated, just sliced and fried, although the sauce does take some time to reduce. If you wanted to speed the process up, I would drain some (maybe half) of the 'pork juices' out of the fried pork so there is not as much liquid. My pork (after being fried) probably 'sweated' about 1 cup of pork juices that were then added to the sauce. 

Bulgogi & Lemon bars

Dinner made on April 1st: 

 Bulgogi! 

 This recipe was a success! Found at http://alohaworld.com/ono/viewrecipe.php?id=1098731563&category=Beef, it tasted yummy! I accidentally cut too much ginger off the root, adding about 1-2 TBSP instead of the tsp that the recipe calls for. To make up for this, I doubled the rest of the ingredients in the recipe. The meat turned out a little bit salty, but I don't think that this made the dish not tasty. If you are sensitive to salt, I would suggest using low sodium shoyu.  I think it was better to let it burn a bit in the pan and then use the beef to 'wipe' up the sauce from the pan before doing the next round of meat. Slicing the meat while the beef was still frozen worked best to get thin slices. 

after that, 

Lemon Bars!

The lemon bars were made from a recipe given to my family by our next door neighbor. I made both a 9x9 pan (for my dad) and a 9 x13 pan (for my work). The recipe was for a 9x9 pan, so I essentially tripled it to make it easier. This made it a little bit difficult, especially when I was trying to divide up the batter portion. I accidentally poured more batter into the 9 x 9 pan, so my dad will get thicker lemon portion than my work people. The recipe called for a 350 degrees and 25 minutes of final baking. As the pictures showed, the 9x9 pan came this close to burning so in the future I will definitely be checking the bars at 20 minutes. The 9 x13 pan was the perfect temperature so I think 25 minutes was good for the larger pan.  The lemon bars were also finished with a lemon frosting made from lemon juice and powdered sugar. I used 2 lemons to dilute the powdered sugar, but I think think that it would have been better to use 3 lemons and make the frosting very thin. The consistency I used was more of a past and it would pull up the pieces of lemon bar underneath. I'm not sure how this will affect the finished project, as I still have to wait for them to cool before I can cut into the pan.