Easy Holiday Recipe

Thought I'd share a very easy holiday recipe that I have grown up on.

Holiday Apple Cider

Apple Juice
Oranges (depends on how much apple juice. About 2 oranges for a gallon).
Whole Cloves


1. Puncture oranges with the whole cloves. 10-15 cloves per orange.
2. Pour apple juice into a large pot and add oranges.
3. Put on simmer for an hour so the orange/clove flavour gets incorporated into the apple juice.
4. Serve warm.


No pictures, sorry, but try it, it's easy and tastes really good.

My Birthday

So my birthday just passed, about a week ago or so and I made a bunch of food for my party (which kind of was a flop since only one person showed up. But I still had fun!).

So here are the things I made for the party:

Mint macaroons with a cream cheese filling. In case you didn't know, macaroons (the classic French kind) should be gluten and soy free because they are made with almond flour (which sadly is crazy expensive, but it was so worth it).









Peppermint candies. I took Alton Brown's candy corn recipe and instead of vanilla extract, used peppermint extract and coloured half of it pink and left the other white and put them together and rolled them into balls. Pretty tasty.









Peppermint bark. My mum kept going on about how we should make some. I kept seeing some on covers of food magazines and the peppermint bark at Williams Sonoma and finally decided to make some. And now I am down to my last piece which I will be eating for breakfast/lunch/brunch.







This picture is pretty bad but in the background you can see my macaroons but the things I was trying to point out is my cream puffs. For some reason my gluten free cream puffs are always really liquidy (yes that is a technical term) so I pour the batter into muffin pans. I always spray it down so it wouldn't stick, but it still does anyway. Oh well.

I filled them with whipped cream and topped them off with some of those Mickey Mouse sprinkles.




Now to plug a few TV shows. On the science channel there is a show called Blais Off. It is hosted by one of my favourite chefs ever, Richard Blais, and he takes classic American food and adds a molecular gastronomy twist to it. If you don't know who Richard Blais is turn into this show or watch the current season of Top Chef (all stars). He is on both, and he is amazing.

Another show, isn't a food show, but it does have the Iron Chef America Chairman on it. The new Hawaii Five-O. My mum watched it when she was young and now that they brought it back all new a re-vamped she watched it again and eventually I got hooked as well. Last Monday, at the end of the episode, guess who shows up. The Chairman. It was weird and hilarious. It has nothing to do with food but it was pretty cool.

My mum has begun the big baking frenzy she does almost every year. She has already made sugar cookies, not gluten free so I can't have any, which is kind of evil. But I have made a lot of gingerbread cookie dough. Last year I tried to make the lamp post from Narnia out of gingerbread but the gingerbread recipe sucked, but this year it has turned out great and once I assemble the lamp post I will post a picture.

To leave you I shall show you something I made three years ago for my AP European History teacher:

November Sum Up

Yes, this is delayed, I've become quite busy recently with living situations and finals.

I have one more final tomorrow but I decided to update right now.

So November, I made a lot of food. Here it is:


Rice Krispie treats covered in chocolate. Topped off with Mickey Mouse sprinkles (from Disneyland).
















Oatmeal cookies, made with oat flour. Glazed with an apple powdered sugar glaze.













Fish 'n chips. Chips baked in oven with paprika. Fish dipped in eggs whites and covered in crushed rice krispies and oven baked. Relish is pickles and plain Greek yogurt. Healthy.












Pumpkin pie. A whole foods just opened up by my house and Whole Foods has a lot more gluten free things than the other store I use to go to. Now they have gluten free pie crust. I have my own recipe for gluten free pie crust, but it's nice to be lazy. Also my mum was demanding (literally) pumpkin pie.














Oh yeah, that's candy corn. I made it. Anyone watch Good Eats? The new Halloween episode. Yeah, I had to make some.











And a picture from my Thanksgiving. Last year there was only 5 people, then my brother left for work and we watched Star Trek. This year we had 15 1/2 people (my cousin Julian is only 23 months old, but he does eat like a full person). This is a picture of my dad and my uncle Jared staring at the turkey which was a little dry.








I will be posting again soon for what I made for my birthday.

-Charlotte

Halloween and Ike's

I know it's November but alas I still attended one last Halloween party while we were still in the spirits. My close friend had a little Halloween party at her house and I couldn't help but make something. I saw Alton Brown's new Halloween episode of Good Eats and he made candied apples and I decided to make them for the party. They turned out pretty good (although I had never had a candied apple before) only every time I would try to take a bite and my nose would get sticky.



















So today, while looking for a place to live, my mum, brother, and I went to Ike's Place and got sandwiches. The good thing about this place is they have a lot of vegan choices which includes gluten free bread. And they are really good, don't just take my word for it, you can see by the long line of people outside.

This is what we got:
My mum- Eli Manning on sourdough bread
My brother- The Joker on sourdough bread
Me- Tony Soprano on gluten free bread

Warning: these sandwiches will fill you up like crazy.

How did we know about it? Man vs. Food

More recipes posted soon and I will post my holiday food...once I make it.

_Charlotte

November: The Month of Food

In case you were wondering, we had butternut squash risotto:














Made by me.

So this year for Halloween it seemed like it was canceled or something. No one decorated, and we had a total of three groups come by our house and trick or treat. It was depressing. But I still had my Halloween fun in the form of Disneyland.















My cousin, my mum, and I went to Mickey's Halloween Party. I was the Red Queen and my cousin was a dinosaur. It was pretty awesome, and a lot of fun. The next day we were in Disneyland and spent time there. We came home on Halloween and everywhere it didn't seem like Halloween was happening.

I still had my Halloween spirit by decorating our house to look like Fleet Street. It was pretty cool I had a display of meat pies (made out of tissue paper) in our front window and a cut out of Sweeney Todd in the upstairs window with blood splatters on the window.

Sadly I have not done much cooking but if you get a chance check out Alton Brown's Halloween episode for this year, it was pretty hilarious and cool.

I will be cooking again soon, though since it is November and that means food and lots of it.

-Charlotte

Best Season Ever

This is my favourite season. Why? Pumpkins. I love pumpkins. My favourite ice cream is pumpkin, my favourite pie is pumpkin, see the trend?

And I've already started baking in the spirit of the fall season (or pumpkin season).















These start the festive food. My mummy bought me a doughnut maker off of Thinkgeek.com, and I've been having fun coming up with awesome doughnuts. These are my pumpkin doughnuts with marshmellow filling (in the hole) dipped in chocolate and topped off with walnuts. They were pretty good but the chocolate I used was weird so it made it odd. Next time I will but a dark chocolate that is semi-sweet.

















These are cupcakes I made for a choir retreat. They all loved them. They are apple cupcakes with a caramel frosting topped with a little sprinkling of salt. The only thing would change about them is maybe add some cinnamon to the batter.


Speaking of choir retreat, I was the chef on the trip. I was in charged of the food so I made a vegetarian jambalaya (we have three vegetarians, one person allergic to fish, two people [including me] allergic to soy, and then me also allergic to wheat). Jambalaya was very simple and I got to serve it lunch lady style. They handed me their plates and I dumped the food on with a big spoon, but it was good food. For breakfast I wasn't really in charge but I helped prepare it and I made the scrambled eggs, and sausage, and cut the cantaloupe. I got a good job on cutting the cantaloupe. For lunch we had a tomato, onion, and mozzarella salad and personalized paninis. It all was good and people liked it all.

I've been coming home a lot recently and every time I'm home I make dinner. I've made pumpkin gnocchi, nachos, curry and rice, and right now my mum and I are trying to decide what to make for dinner. We want something warm since it's raining, which reminds me, I need to get an umbrella. I have rain boots and everything, just no umbrella. Odd, I need to get one very soon.

More food underway. We might make cookies today too! My mum calls them magic cookies... yeah I laughed too. I don't know what makes the so magical, but I will find out.

-Charlotte

Brit. Beans

This is more of an entry for food allergies rather than cupcakes, but a cupcake update will be next!

So in my local (when I'm at my parent's house) supermarket they have a small section in the ethnic food aisle of British foods. Most of them are filled with wheat but there are a few things that I can eat and love to eat.

Heinz Beans are my favourite snack or even lunch. You just heat them up and you get protein and low calories at the same time. Sadly, I am in mourning for these beans because they no longer supply them at the super market. They were great little white beans in a tomato sauce and you could anything to it as well. Plus they are soy and wheat free.

There is a British food store about twenty minutes away from my parents house but I don't know exactly where it is but I now have to go there for my dose of Heinz Beans or what I call 'My Brit beans'.

And now I wish I still had my can of beans back that I ate my third week here at college. The last can I got from our store.

Good bye sweet Brit Beans, when we shall meet again, I know not.

-Charlotte

P.s. If you are vegetarian you should eat lot of beans. In Florence they are known as the poor man's meat because of how much protein is packed into them.

Rice

Yes I am updating twice because I have been absent for a while...from a lot of things, except school.

Anyway this entry is about rice. Why? Because I'm a quarter Japanese. Okay, no that is not the real reason. It is because rice is used in so many different cuisines and it can be used savory or sweet and is just so darn tasty.

There are many types of rice and I like them all. Brown rice, white rice, short grain, long grain; I'll eat it. If it wasn't for rice then I'd be stuck eating quinoa all the time. Don't get me wrong, I like quinoa, but one thing all the time would get old after a while so rice gives me variation.

A few nights ago when I, once again, had gone back home I made dinner for my parents. I wanted something Cajun, and so did they, so I made jambalaya.And it turned out to be really good.

I wanted to keep the rice theme going for that night so I even made a rice dish for dessert. I was something I had seen on the new Cooking Channel. David Rocco has made this chocolate risotto that I had to try because it was easy.

I ran into a few problems, though, while making it. I ran out of milk and creme so I didn't have enough to cook the rice all the way making it slightly undercooked, which was a shame because the rest of it was really good. But now I know my mistakes so next time I make it, it will be perfect.

Anyway, what I'm saying is rice is your friend, enjoy it and go cook with it.

-Charlotte

Sold Out

This past weekend I went back home to my parent's house and used the wonderful oven to make a dozen cupcakes. They were white cupcakes with Key Lime marmalade filling and butter cream frosting. Topped with a gum paste logo of the swim team.

I originally had no clue what was going to be the fate of these cupcakes but apparently my dad's swim coach sold them in a like a bake sale (I guess) so raise money for the team (again, a guess). Sunday morning my dad drops them off and all of them got sold. My dad said not everything got sold, so my cupcakes were a best seller, which is nice.

...Then I got a severe case of stomach flu (that's what we finally decided on) on Sunday which caused a train wreck of events that ends with me here, sitting on the couch where I will sleep tonight.

Here's a picture for you.

The team colour is green and their logo is these three waves and a penguin but I didn't have a patience or the time to paint penguins on every single thing.

-Charlotte

Cupcake Animation

I am a cinema major currently, emphasis on film directing, but I would like experience in everything I can. This summer I started working on an animation about a cupcake and I am working more on it. I am still in the storyboard area of the animation, but once I post it I will be sure to put it on here for you all to watch.

I am working on making a microwave cupcake, I plan to complete it tonight while my roommates are asleep. If I do it while they are awake then they keep coming into the kitchen so after I finish my classes, which are in the morning, I go to sleep and stay up late. If you wish to know how late, let's just say I have dinner at midnight... or is it breakfast...who knows?

I am also working on a script for a short film about pie. The working title is 'Pi Makes the World Go Round'. It is the story of a girl who struggles to celebrate her favourite geek holiday: Pi Day, but other factors keep interfering. I plan to pitch it next Tuesday at my writer's circle. Hopefully all goes well, I will write it anyway.

I will work more on my recipes for my Tim Burton cookbook and post more of my Geek Cookbook recipes sometime soon. My laptop is virus free now so hopefully all goes well.

-Charlotte

Epic Fail

A few weekends ago I went home and I really wanted cookies so I went ahead and made myself some cookies. At first I was going to make chocolate chip cookies, but as I was flipping through the cookbook I saw lemon tea cookies and decided to make those.

I don't really know what happened but they came out as flat as pancakes and could not get them off of the pan (well I did but it took a lot of scraping with a spatula). SO in the end I had a bunch of cookie crumbs left over.

The day before my mum and I could not resist buying form figs at the store that looked really good, so that gave me an ideas.

I took those crumbs and made them into a crust. I mixed the figs with some honey and I put that in the glorious oven. When it came out it smelled amazing but when I tried to cut and serve the pie it didn't turn out so great and looked more like a cobbler.

So I topped it off with some yogurt and am calling it my ancient cobbler, which started off as cookies and then became a pie.

The picture does not make it look good, but it was pretty tasty, if I do say so myself, my mum would agree with me.

Request

So while I was on my big cupcake cooking extravaganza this past summer, we had a lot of cupcakes around the house and my parents, in an effort to get rid of them, brought them to work and all those other places they go (I don't know everywhere they go).

My dad decided to bring one of my Mike Wazowski cupcakes to his swim coach and she loved it. On the 26th on this month they are having a swim meet and she asked me (through my father) if I would make a dozen cupcakes for their team.

I said 'yes', which took me a while to figure out because one of my friends is coming down that weekend and I really wanted to see her (or anybody for that matter), but I decided I will go home and make cupcakes. I might spend Saturday with her, her friends, my brother, and his girlfriend, then go down on Saturday evening and crank out cupcakes... we'll see what happens.

But I will make those cupcakes!

I also plan to start experimenting with microwave cupcakes. I have little silicon cupcake cups that I brought from home, I just need to go to Trader Joe's, yeah.

-Charlotte

Moving In

As you may or may not know I am a college student and I am living in the dorms (apartment...things) and we had a move in day. I had been packing since the beginning of summer (my roommates...not so much), but all summer long I had been making these cupcakes. In my dorms I knew I was going to have a small kitchen but not an oven (even though the horrible floor plan said otherwise) so I had to finish all twenty of my cupcakes beforehand. Towards the end of summer I made so many cupcakes.

As a last push, and a peace offering for my roommates, I made/brought them the last four cupcakes I made (Floating House, Ellie, Barbie & Ken, and Lotso) and placed them on the counter and said 'eat the cupcakes' or something like that.

Well guess what, they didn't eat them, I ended up eating most of them. I had been eating cupcakes all summer so I was kind of tired of them but I didn't want them to go to waste. After telling them to eat the cupcakes and saying my mantra for the summer, 'Have a Cupcake!', after ALL that, not a single one of them was eaten by my roommates.

I had also brought up King cake that was dry and slightly overcooked on the bottom (my first attempt at gluten/soy free King cake) and my dried out doughnut beignets and they ate those. But my delicious, moist cupcakes left untouched (by them). So when I knew it was their time to go and one by one had to throw each of my creations away. I practically cried...honestly. SO much for peace offering.

I tried to be nice, but when they dis my cupcakes I'm not going to be nice.

-Charlotte


[Made crepes the other day and those were gone in a heartbeat. Boring crepes that they just put jam on=all gone. Awesome cupcakes inspired by a studio not far from here= decoration until they rot. I bet you wouldn't do that.]

Lotso Cupcakes

We all love cupcakes, sure there are some that don't like making cupcakes, but we all love to eat them, right? It's like eating a whole cake for ourselves, but it is small enough that people won't look at you like a pig.

Cupcakes have come a long way and today there are an increasing amount of bakeries that sell only cupcakes. Not only that but there is also a Food Network show about cupcakes.

Now I'm not a big fan of cupcakes, I always preferred other pastries, but I love creating cupcakes, and having other people enjoy them.

It was that reason that encouraged me to make my Pixar cupcakes.

Now this blog won't entirely be about cupcakes, there will be a lot of cupcakes, but there will also be other treats, probably cakes, mentioned.

And I will tell you some great places to get cupcakes, besides those boring ones at Safeway.

-Charlotte