Photo Book

Here is the photobook of our UK Trip I made for my big brother.  :)

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BRC Heaven

Just letting everyone know that Miguel's Jr. had it's soft opening tonight and I got my BRC (bean rice and cheese) burrito fill. Best part? It was free!!!! If you're in the Costa Mesa area and want something good to eat, check out Miguel's on the corner of Newport and 17th! They plan to officially open this Thursday!!!

Hello Kitty Pull Apart Cupcake Cake

Hello Kitty Pull Apart Cupcake Cake

There were a few birthdays celebrated this past weekend and what’s a birthday without cake?  I decided to attempt to make my first:

1. Pull apart cupcake cake
2. Homemade cupcakes
3. Homemade butter cream

I was successful in two out of the three which is not bad!  Which ones do you think I succeeded at?  Well if you guess 1. and 3. you are correct!  As for the homemade cupcakes, I think I over baked them because they became kind of hard on the outside and crumbly on the inside.  Here’s the recipe I used: http://smittenkitchen.com/blog/2009/07/best-birthday-cake/ from Smitten Kitchen which is the same website from where I get the brownie roll-out cookie recipe from (which are yummy).  Here’s my explanation for my scone/biscuit-like cupcake…The recipe said to bake 35-40 minutes for two 9-inch round cake pans.  It also said this recipe makes about 22-24 cupcakes.  So great I’m thinking!  But how long do I bake it for cupcakes?  I figured it had to be less than the amount for two round cakes.  So I opted for 30 minutes…Apparently that’s too long.  Hehe!  The taste was still yummy, but the texture was too crumbly and dry.  I brought a couple in for my taste tester coworkers and warned them ahead of time to taste at their own risk.  They are two of the nicest people I know so of course they’re going to tell me “It’s not that bad!”  So I decided to just go with this batch because I was partly lazy and partly too busy to bake another batch.  I figured if I slopped enough butter cream on there, and fed them to kids, they would eat anything, right?

I had a lot of fun creating the pull apart cupcake cake.  The only problem is that these types of cakes take A LOT of butter cream, so I had to make another batch the morning of my dance class (where I was to bring this to).  I placed them tightly together on my lovely Martha Stewart square cake stand (given to me by my friend, Justin…I love it and I use it ALL the time!), slathered lilac butter cream all over the top to make it look like one big cake.  Then I Googled online “how to smooth out butter cream on a cake” and learned to dip my spatula thing in hot water and carefully run it over the butter cream.  Again, not perfect, but good enough since I was running out of time!  Good tip, Google!

The girls pulling apart the cake! :)

Then I took a traced Hello Kitty face on parchment paper and placed it carefully over the lilac butter cream to trace with a toothpick.  Then I took a Wilton tip (I think it was #24 or some other star decorating tip) and filled in Hello Kitty’s face with white butter cream leaving the bow blank for pink butter cream.  Then I had some leftover royal icing that I mixed with black food coloring but the darkest I could get it without messing with the royal icing texture was gray.  So gray is it!  I used the gray royal icing to trace the pink bow and the whole Hello Kitty face.  I also used the gray royal icing to fill in her eyes and whiskers.  Then I took a little bit of the leftover white butter cream and mixed some yellow in for her nose.  The final product was really cute.  Not perfect, but with practice I will improve hopefully!  Can’t wait for the next birthday!!!

Here are some additional sites I visited for tips on cupcake cakes, butter cream recipes, etc:

Best Birthday Cake Recipe

Glorious Treats American Buttercream

How to Get Perfectly Smooth Buttercream

How to Write on a Cake 

Hello Kitty Cake Inspiration

Portola Coffee Lab

I can't remember where I first heard of Portola Coffee Lab. I watch a lot of Food Network shows and I read a lot of food blogs from local writers (like Fast Food Maven from OC Register). So this discovery could have been from anywhere.

It was a Sunday morning where we didn't have anything planned for once which is always nice every once in a while. My Timmy husband told me the night before "I'm going to take you on a surprise tomorrow morning!" I was super excited for this surprise and kept thinking what it could be as I dozed to sleep for the night.

When we woke up this morning I put my sneakers on per Tim's request and put my lip balm in my pocket. The essentials of course... And off we went. East on the 91 freeway, south on the 55 and I thought hmm maybe 85 Degrees for breakfast?! Then we got on the 405 North and then I knew we passed 85 Degrees. So hmm what else is North on the 405? We pulled up to a furniture store plaza and then I realized where I was... OC Mart Mix! And what's inside OC Mart Mix?! Portola Coffee Lab! Woohoo!

It's pretty cool inside. Exposed ceiling, wooden structures and eclectic stores fill this building. Not much was open since it was still early in the morning. But it was neat to walk around and think about the stores we want to check out when we come back...like the Cheese Store.

So we walked up to Portola Coffee Lab and that's exactly what we saw--a science lab-like place with baristas as the scientists in their lab coats. This isn't your ordinary coffee shop with coffee pots but instead the coffee scientists meticulously brew each cup in fancy ways I cannot even explain. Just go and watch their experiment with your coffee beans.

The service was delightful. I was unsure what to order or how things worked there. The nice woman at the register with the pretty red lips kindly explained the different options while asking me my preferences to best form her hypothesis on what I should get. In the end they brewed me up a Colombian roast and I accompanied that with a breakfast burrito because why not?! Tim got his chai latte (not a fan of coffee him) and a breakfast burrito too.

He wasn't blown away with his chai latte (he loves the Trader Joe's powder kind) but we both enjoyed our breakfast burritos that has egg, bacon, bell pepper, and black beans in it. It came with a side of not-to-spicy-yet-still-tasty salsa. My coffee was was bold, flavorful and tingled my tongue with excitement. Because I told red lips lady I drink coffee with cream and sugar she suggested this particular coffee and method would go best with what I desired. I'm sure whatever I got though it would have good. If you're a coffee lover and in the mood to check out a really cool somewhat trendy indoor mall-ish type place, check out the OC Mart Mix!

Also if my brother is reading this, there's a place called SHUCK Oyster Bar that we'd like to take you to too. Looks cool. :o)

Beer Cookies?!

Well we've been back for almost a week now from our amazing trip to the UK. We traveled to Ireland, Scotland, and England and slept in 9 cities in 14 days. In Ireland, Guinness is THE drink. Well not really...there are so many beers you could choose from but Guinness is probably one of their more world famous ones. In fact a huge holiday there is "Arthur's Day" to celebrate Arthur Guinness in September.

I'm not the biggest fan of Guinness. I do like it in a Snake Bite-half Guinness half cider but other than that, it's not my beverage of choice. On our trip we made it to the Guinness Factory in Dublin. My brother and I learned how to pour the perfect pint of Guinness and Tim got his pint up in the Sky Bar complete with a shamrock design in the head. We also ate at their "pub" restaurant in which their special featured Guinness as an ingredient. Tim and my bro got that which was a traditional Irish beef stew. I got the traditional Irish vegetable soup (I must have gotten this soup like 5 times during our trip it's so good! Maybe I'll try making that next).

So much Guinness inspired me, believe it or not, to try a Guinness chocolate chip cookie recipe. I found a bunch of the same recipes on the web so tonight I visited the grocery store to grab all the ingredients including the Extra Stout Guinness and went to work. It was a long process because it included reducing two 12 ounce bottles of Guinness to 1/3 of a cup syrup stuff. In the end the results were quite scrumptious!!!

Chunky chocolate chips in a gooey chewy cookie. "Can you taste the Guinness???" is what I kept asking my taste testers aka my husband, mom and dad. Nope they said. I was a little disappointed they couldn't taste it because after all I went through this specific recipe just for that. Weird. Regardless it was a delicious cookie and I would make them again. In fact I have to make them again because I froze half the batch for another baking day. :o)

Eat Eat Eat

It is Day 6 of our UK vacation. We are in the Yorkshire area of Northern England after a great week in Ireland. Wifi is sketchy so I'm going to wait until I get home to the States to post an ultimate blog post of all the food we've enjoyed on our trip. It's been great so far and to those who say food in the UK is not so great...well you're wrong! We've had scrumptious meals here at the pubs, "proper"restaurants, an even fast food. Tonight we indulged in tasty Indian food in Harrogate which is the town my brother lives in. The weather has been great so walking to town to get dinner and back was quite enjoyable. Here's a sneak peak of my soon to come food blog of the UK with a picture of... Haha Burger King!!! Yea yea yea I know--why am I getting BK here? Well because we were driving back from the airport and most things close at 9 pm here in the small towns so this "truck stop" was one of the only places we had a chance getting some dinner so late. Don't worry though, my whopper was 100% British and Irish beef. :)

Onigiri what?!

Feeding my pet Panda an onigiri from Cream Pan!

I was introduced to onigiris on our trip to Japan back in 2008 when we took a family trip to visit my brother since he was stationed there for the Navy.  When he picked us up from the airport he had a bunch of onigiris waiting for us to snack on, but he probably got them because he was hungry himself.  This morning I visited the Japanese Bakery, Cream Pan in Tustin.  I bought two salmon onigiris and a pork cutlet sammich--a staple throughout our whole trip.  As I was reversing from my parking spot in the Cream Pan parking lot, I feasted upon the first onigiri and savored it like it was my last meal.  I have another one for lunch, but it's taking A LOT of will power to save it until then (another 2 hours).  My little onigiri is just staring at me... saying, "Eat me! Eat me!"  So before I nom nom nom on it, I decided to write my ode to onigiris---

An onigiri is a Japanese rice ball that can be found at most convenience stores.  My favorite--Seven and I Holdings which is the parent company of 7-Eleven.  Didn't know that?  You learned something new today! :o)  Well this 7-Eleven type convenient store is completely amazing compared to the 7-Elevens here in the States.  It's like a mini mart of goodies that are actually delicious and cheap.  I don't think I've been in a 7-Eleven here in the States for like years.  And if I go into a 7-Eleven here, it's just for their Slurpees.  As much of an "adventure" eater I am, I don't have any desire to eat a hot dog from here.  However in Japan, their convenient store is full of cheap Japanese street food right at your finger tips.  So from that first day in Japan, my heart belonged to the onigiris.  

On our flight home from Japan with my last Japanese Onigiri!

There are various onigiris but the base of this snack is simple--rice wrapped in nori or seaweed.  My favorite kind of onigiri is the salmon kind.  Bits of salmon is mixed in the shoyu/soy sauce rice and provides a good basis for a quick snack. Other kinds of onigiris are filled with tuna w/ mayonnaise (The Japanese love their mayo!), pickled plum and other stuff I don't know of.  Onigiris are commonly shaped into either fat triangles or ovals.  It's often wrapped in plastic and easily portable, hence me devouring it in my car as I backed out of the Cream Pan parking space.  Onigiris are similar to sushi but I don't think they consider it the same.  I think the rice is different and I don't remember seeing onigiris with any raw fish in it but I could be wrong since I mostly just ate the salmon and tuna ones.  It's also very similar to Spam Musubi which is a Hawaiian staple consisting of a slice of spam (you are NOT my friend if you don't like Spam haha jay kay), sticky rice and wrapped in nori/seaweed.  Spam Musubi is found in all ABC Stores in Hawaii but not in any ABC Stores in Las Vegas.  I learned that the hard way.  Enter Jenny's sad face here. 

Back to onigiris, there's also a whole art form of creating onigiris into fun shapes for bento boxes,  Check out http://www.yumyumbento.com/.   My good college buddy Justin gave me the book Yum Yum Bento Box so I can make cute rice balls into shapes such as pandas (my favorite), hearts, penguins, etc.  It is such a cute book and you should all go to the book store and browse through it then buy it and make your own onigiris.  :o)

Pork Cutlet Sammich from Cream Pan

Happy nom nom nom-ing!

P.S. Pork cutlet sammiches---buy them, eat them, wipe your drool off with a napkin.  If you're in town, I know you can get them at Cream Pan and at the Mitsuwa Japanese Market Costa Mesa.  I really hope the Mitsuwa in Irvine starts to carry them too.  Please share if you know additional places around here where I can get these magical delights.