Day 99 of 100: Pork carrot ginger buns

Today’s experiment: Pork carrot ginger buns

Result:

I’m a huge fan of dim sum, so I totally jump on any dim sum recipe that’s relatively easy to make.

These were super yummy, but they’re rather time-consuming.

It takes some technique to fold them, and I couldn’t quite get the pretty folding right…

I panfried these using this recipe and they’re fabulous. They’re also pretty yummy with a rice vinegar/soy sauce dip!

We have one more day of this 100 Day Project! I’m going to save post #100 for a recipe I’m planning on doing in a few days, so stay tuned 😀 Unfortunately there won’t be any more science, I’m still waiting for my antibodies to arrive… -____-

Day 97 of 100: Easiest donuts ever

Today’s experiment: Cake mix donuts

Result:

Yes, these are the easiest donuts ever. I used the recipe here: 1 box of your favorite cake mix, 1/4 cup vegetable oil, and 1 egg. The recipe pipes this mixture into a special donut maker, which I do not have, but I do have a donut pan. So I baked these at 350F for about 10 minutes.

Yeah so these expand. They ended up looking like muffins with a hole at the bottom.

Note: make sure the pan is nicely greased. Most of these didn’t hold their shape because they stuck to the pan. They were still yummy though!

Day 96 of 100: Animal style tots!

Today’s experiment: Animal Style Tots

Result:

I never quite understood the whole “secret menu” thing. Especially since everyone knows what animal style fries are at In-N-Out. Do people get some sort of satisfaction from knowing what other people don’t about In-N-Out?

Okay, cynicism done.

One of the grad students in our department came to lunch with some amazing animal style tater tots from a food truck on campus, and this looked like the most amazing comfort food ever.

First, make the tots. I used this recipe. Also, if you want to do the sauce super legit, here’s a recipe. Otherwise, I caramelized some onions, added the onions, thousand island dressing, and some cheddar cheese to the tots, and baked it at about 400F until the cheese melted.

This was fabulous. I’ll probably try making the sauce recipe next time, but for the sake of time, the thousand island dressing works well.

On a side note, why can’t comfort food ever be healthy?

Day 93 of 100: Egg Drop Soup

Today’s experiment: Egg Drop Soup

Result:

When I was a kid, our family went to Silver Palace Restaurant in Whittier for a lot of our family gatherings.

I remember the fish at the entrance, the super-friendly host named Bob (I hope he’s still working there, he was there when our family went back about 2 years ago), the whole fish with the googly eye and all, and egg drop soup.

Ever since then, every time we go to a Chinese or pseudo-Chinese restaurant, I look for the egg drop soup.

So when I found a recipe to make it, you betcha I bounced on that. It’s super simple to make too! And if you do the chemistry right, you get beautiful egg ribbons.

This recipe from The Kitchn (not a typo) gives a lot of possible variations to the soup, ranging from mushrooms and tofu to star anise and cinnamon. I preferred to keep it simple, so this time I stuck with ginger and soy sauce. But I’ve added veggies in before, and it’s a great way to use up any extra greens/mushrooms you’ve got lying around.

Hurray, childhood throwbacks 😀

Day 92 of 100: Chocolate?

Today’s experiment: Green tea chocolate

Result:

CHOCOLATE!! …to quote a particular Spongebob episode.

Except, this chocolate is very green, because of the matcha.

I looooove matcha, and this recipe uses a whopping 2 tablespoons of the pretty green stuff. These chocolates are lovely and sweet, and this recipe makes a lot (36 squares), so get a party together of other matcha-lovers and make this chocolate happen.

Definitely pay attention to the “notes” at the bottom of the page, you’ll want to invest in some of the fancier white chocolate to make sure it has some cocoa butter in it. Science.

Day 90 of 100: Best brownies ever

Today’s experiment: Cookie dough brownies

Result:

I realize the title of this post is a bold thing to say.

But I’m sure that these are the best brownies ever, because you really can’t eat just one.

I made these with some middle school girls at my church in a small group context, and they were done by the end of our time together.

So I think “slutty brownies” refers to a chocolate chip cookie base with brownies on top, but these take that to a whole new level. They’re cold because you need the cookie dough to solidify, but that seems to make them a little less dense. And the cookie dough has no egg, so there’s no risk of salmonella.

Anyway, here’s the famous recipe, from Brown-eyed baker. I cut the recipe in half to make an 8×8 pan, 9×13 pan of brownies is a rather ridiculous amount of brownies and like 4 sticks of butter. Not necessarily a bad thing.

Day 87 of 100: Crunch time food

Today’s experiment: Collection of quick and simple food things

Result:

This week is my church’s Vacation Bible School, our church-wide outreach effort to children and families in our community. It is an absolutely stellar production and a true joy to be a part of every year.

But I have not done that much meal planning and cooking between work and VBS, so here are some collections of things that are tasty, decently healthy, filling, and quick to make for you on-the-go people. Which, frankly, seems to be a majority of America.

I’ve been working on slowing down in my life to allow time for rest, recuperation, and reflection, but we all have crunch time weeks.

In the photo I’ve made a matcha banana smoothie, baked chicken katsu, and an ear of corn. I made the smoothie and corn as the katsu was baking, and I had a great meal in 30 minutes.

Matcha banana smoothie
1 serving, based on recipe from JustOneCookbook1 tsp matcha
1 banana, chopped and frozen
1 cup or so of 1% milk
A bit of honey
Put all ingredients in a NutriBullet or blender and mix it all up!

Baked Chicken Katsu
I just used the JustOneCookbook recipe. I like this website. It also has great and quick recipes for baked salmon “katsu” or regular chicken katsu.

Microwave Corn
Seriously, just put the whole ear, husk on, in the microwave for 4 minutes. After it’s cooled a bit, cut off the basal end (cut me some slack, I’m a scientist) and slide the husk off and remove all the stringies. Done.

Day 86 of 100: Something a little strange, anyone?

Today’s experiment: Black bean brownies!

Result:

Okay no, it’s really not that strange. They still taste like brownie.

This week is our church’s vacation Bible school (VBS) and I’m the coordinator for our skit and dance team. So I figured I’d make my team some brownies as a thank-you, but of course I can’t make normal brownies. So black bean brownies it is 😀

Here’s the recipe if you wanna try it out!

Day 83 of 100: The satisfaction of efficiency

Today’s experiment: Spicy tomato and squash soup

Result:

There’s something quite satisfying to me about seeing what I have in the fridge and using as much of it as possible in one recipe.

In this week’s Abundant Harvest box I received tomatoes, squash, cucumber, lettuce, corn, basil, garlic, watermelon, and stone fruit. Abundant Harvest has a lot of these use-as-much-as-possible recipes, so I used this squash and tomato soup recipe.

But of course, I tweaked it with stuff I had in my pantry. I had red pepper flakes and honey, which I used in place of the peppers and maple syrup. I clearly did not have enough tomatoes because my soup is significantly more yellow than the soup in the recipe, so maybe buying a can of tomato paste would’ve been helpful. I used 2 cups of stock instead of 3.

It still tastes pretty good. And it’s spicy but not too much so. I’m trying to train myself to eat more spicy things anyway so it works out.

Day 82 of 100: THIS IS THE GREATEST DAY OF MY BAKING LIFE.

Today’s experiment: Macarons, again.

Result:

LOOK HOW BEAUTIFUL THEY ARE. And tasty too! I thought the filling would be a little too sweet but the sweetness is nicely balanced by the soft and nutty cookie sandwich.

My boyfriend helped me make these, and when we were done I was so happy and proud of these that I was bouncing around the kitchen as he stood there a little confused.

I made 2 batches today. The first batch I baked at 19 minutes and they still turned out a little burnt, so the next batch was at 16 minutes and they’re perfect.

Yeah so I didn’t decorate these Kirby style but that’ll be for next time mayhaps 😀