bread pudding

I'm actually not a huge fan of bread. I know, it's kind of blasphemous, but I don't know why it just never appealed to me. Maybe because I like rice so much more? But I digress.

I do love bread pudding though, with a passion. What could be better than a custard-y, gooey, soft, but crusty bread pudding with fruits and ice cream? I know you are speechless. No, I kid.

But seriously now. Remember N's paella post? Well, there wasn't just paella at that dinner, there was tempura bacon (ah yes, can't go a post without mentioning bacon), homemade French fries, broccoli, but most importantly (we all know dessert is the most crucial part of a meal), there was bread pudding. Made by this girl here.

We had made bread pudding together before with frozen peaches and cinnamon and it was delicious. However, this time, Melody went all out--she whipped out a half a stick of butter. I kid you not. When I saw that, I knew that this bread pudding would be irresistible.

I'll have to ask her where she got the recipe, but there was an egg and milk mixture, challah bread, apples and raisins. Oh and brown sugar. Mustn't forget that! She sautéed the ingredients (minus the bread and custard mix) in the butter, then layered it in between the bread and poured the custard over.

Then she baked it until a toothpick came out clean, around 40-50 minutes.

The end result. We ate it with ice cream. I don't have words to describe the sensation of warm, sweet, crunchy, soft bread with a wonderful contrast of cold, melting ice cream.

happiness in the form of cakes

i first heard pchung was going to propose to jen on wednesday and i was super super excited and super super happy and every positive feeling you can possibly feel. in my happy state i decided i just had to bake something for them. dude serious dilemma. but i finally settled on double chocolate cake from smitten kitchen. i've wanted to bake a cake for a long long time, but was always way too lazy. but since this was super super special, i had to do it.

i spent three days on this cake because i didn't have 5 + hours to spare in a single day. friday afternoon i did the raspberry filling. my bad at not documenting each step but again i was lazy. it was really easy. food processors=easier life. straining out the seeds was kinda a hassle but it was fine. i fridged it until i needed it which wasn't until two days later. i would suggest not making this first. when i took it out of the fridge to spread on the cake, it became solidified in a almost gelly consistency. i had to bring it to room temperature and mix it like crazy but it turned out fine. make this the day of, it'll probably be better.

the next day i made the cake. it was easy, except my pans were different sizes and i had SO MUCH batter that i used three cake pans. and it finished baking in like 40 minutes. good thing i checked cause it smelled done. its good to make this the day before since you need to wait for it to cool down.

sunday morning, i made the frosting and halved the recipe. it was surprisingly easy. i cooled it in an ice bath and assembled the cake. i had to shave off the volcano like dome to make t it looked really really ugly so i decorated it was raspberries. the frosting got hard so the raspberries wouldn't stick so i used a dab of icing as glue.

yay! i actually didn't get to see it eaten but i did eat the scrapes and it tasted pretty good. :) it wasn't as hard as i expected! its very do-able and a good recipe!
happily engaged :) and no, not cause of the cake (stolen picture from jen)

okayy, so there was another cake i made for melody and jr's birthday! i was super excited for their birthday too cause they're super cool and awesome! i decided to bake cranberry vanilla coffeecake since i found fresh cranberries! it was cranberry season! i love surprises :)

the ugliness because i ran out of powdered sugar. it looks diseased...

ahh, much better!

the recipe calls for vanilla bean which is i did not have because i am cheap. so i added vanilla extract to the cranberry mixture and the cake itself. i'm sure it would taste much more delicious with the vanilla sugar. a very do-able recipe!

recipe courtesy of epicurious

- n

i can always use good chinese food

for melody and jr's birthday, the girls went to great china for dinner.

it was my first time and it was delicious!

so we ordered a small double skin. it was alright, not too fond of it. it was like glass noodles but made of mung bean and had random stuff in there like shrimp and squid. we mixed the mustard and soy sauce into it which gave it a wasabi like flavor, which i didn't mind ($12.95 not worth it). and sizzling rice soup (charged by person, they seriously know how to get our money). yumm.

of course we had peking duck. i think this was probably my favorite. i can't believe they didn't have the fat on the skin...even though i don't like it, but yeahh. duck is good :) ($29.95)

we ordered this crab thing that had an egg yolk on top and got mixed all together. i think its sauteed crab meat? to eat it, you put the crab mixture in between the 饅頭. omg i super like 饅頭 and it was best when it was warm. the crab thing itself was alright ($19.95). not my favorite. i think it had an interesting taste...

we also ordered jess' favorite chinese string beans ($8.95). i wouldn't really consider it a veggie dish but it was good. and also another really good dish cause i love tofu was braised tofu ($7.95). it was delicious!

so overall, i would definitely say you should eat here. its really good chinese food which is super hard to find up here, especially in berkeley where the closest we come is lotus house or sun hong kong. service on the other hand sucks a lot. the waitresses were rude and sucky. it is a bit pricey and they charge for rice (in socal you get rice for FREE!). but yes, if you are craving good chinese food, this is probably the place to go.

2115 Kittredge Street
Berkeley, CA94704
website

over and out,
n