View From My Booth

The Queen Anne Farmers Market's opening day was last Thursday. I didn't get a chance to leave my booth and look around outside the food vendors area so what I have here is a very limited view from my booth.

Cake

Rosalind made me a birthday cake: light and fluffy chocolate cake topped with light and fluffy cream cheese frosting with a light sprinkling of grated chocolate.

I can't remember enjoying a cake more.

Chocolate Cake

3 cups all purpose flour (or cake flour if you have it)
2 cups sugar
1 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons baking soda
2/3 cup cocoa powder (dutch-processed if you have it)

2 cups water
2 Tablespoons vinegar
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1 Tablespoon vanilla

In a bowl, combine all the dry ingredients (first five ingredients). Whisk together.

In another container, measure out the wet ingredients, whisk together, then dump all of it in the bowl of dry ingredients. Fold until just combined.

Bake in a greased 9x13 pan at 350F for about 35 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center of the cake comes out clean. Let cool.

Cream Cheese Frosting

16 oz cream cheese (at room temperature)
2 cups powdered sugar
1 Tablespoon vanilla

In a stand mixer, using the paddle attachment, mix the cream cheese at high speed until there are no more lumps. Add the powdered sugar. Mix again, slowly at first until the powdered sugar has been incorporated. Add the vanilla. Mix at high speed until light and fluffy.

Our Daily Grains

This is our mix: stark naked granola, no chopped nuts or dried fruits to dress it up. It's just grains with peanut butter, honey and cinnamon. We are just simple folks with simple taste.

Admittedly there are times when we wake up in the morning and we feel like walking on the wild side. Then we might feel so bold as to dress up our granola with creamy vanilla yogurt, bright-colored fresh fruit and even a sprinkling of nuts.

Peanut Butter and Honey Granola

4 cups rolled oats
1 1/2 cups puffed brown rice
1 1/2 cups puffed millet
1/2 cup ground flax
1 T cinnamon

1 cup peanut butter
1 cup honey

In a large bowl combine the oats, rice puffs, millet puffs, flax and cinnamon. In a 2 cup glass measuring cup, measure out peanut butter and honey. Heat in the microwave for a minute then mix thoroughly with a spoon.

Pour the peanut butter mixture onto the bowl with grains.

Using a rubber spatula, coat the grains with peanut butter and honey.

Divide the granola onto 2 sheet pans and spread in a single layer.

Bake at 300F. After 15 minutes give each pan a good stir and trade place (put the bottom pan on top and vice versa). Bake for another 15 minutes or until golden brown.

The granola will crisp up after it cools.

At the Flying House

Bunnies, Kitties, and Flowers

We had a glimpse of spring yesterday: blue skies, 60F weather, and tulips galore! That was not the case today so Rosalind tackled the mist and the cloudy skies with her army of bunnies, kitties, and flowers.

As usual, she used our basic shortbread recipe with only butter, sugar, flour, and vanilla.

She got bags of pastel sprinkles from the Home Cake Decorating Supply Company and she was not  afraid to use them.

But first, the tops were brushed with egg white wash.

When the time came to sprinkle, she was audacious and unstoppable.

After all, she's just another nine-year-old girl that indubitably brightens the world with pink, yellow, purple, and everything shiny.

Up and Running

Leaving our old jobs, relocating the family to another state, starting a Ph.D program, and having a baby didn't bring enough excitement in our lives.  That's why I decided to start up a business. When we finally got somewhat settled in after months of uncertainty, I thought it would be fun to rock the boat a bit.

It's called Sweet Coconut Bakery. People at the bank, the post office, the King County Health Department, and pretty much anybody I talked to about the business asked if my specialties were coconut desserts. Well, not really. I use coconut in a few of my products but the idea behind the name is to make sweets that would evoke flavors of the tropics. Specifically, I wanted to remake my favorite cookies and candies from the Philippines. It turned out that all these cookies and candies that I loved so much originated from Spain: polvoron, lengua de gato, pastillas de leche. They don't sound very tropical, do they. But that's alright. Everything I own has "sweet coconut bakery" already stamped on it. Besides, I like the name and I love coconut. I will gladly specialize in coconut desserts.

Sweet coconut bakery is a very modest venture. As of now, the bakery is up and running through Etsy. Come visit the shop if you get a chance. Etsy is such a huge marketplace; I can imagine how easy it is for vendors to get lost in the crowd.

Korean Sushi (Kimbap)

   

Korean sushi single-handedly made spinach acceptable to Rosalind. 

"I don't mind spinach if it's mixed up with a bunch of things," she announced as she devoured the sushi. From then on, I had no choice but to always keep spinach in the fridge to mix up with anything and everything. For nine years, this poor leafy vegetable was despised and shunned; we had a lot of making up to do.

Korean sushi, the savior of spinach, was introduced to us a few months ago.  Rosalind, coming home from a play date, brought us a plateful of Kimbap. She said that she helped roll the sushi and her friend's mom wanted us to try them.  

Not too long after that, her friend had a Kimbap-making party which she attended unaccompanied by me. Baby Hugh kept me up the night before so I chose to spend my Sunday morning in my nice warm bed instead of an overcrowded kitchen full of preteens with sticky rice on their fingers and hair. (Well okay, I wasn't planning on going anyway but I ended up having an excuse for my antisocial inclinations). Most of her friends who attended had their mothers with them. She lately chastised me for not going with her because the other mothers were shown the tricks on what to do with the rice to make it extra sticky.  

I thought that sticky rice was sticky enough in its natural state. But I did agree that I missed out on a live sushi-making demonstration given by a stay-at-home mom who had been making Kimbap for her children's lunches for years. Consequently, when Rosalind asked if we could make Kimbap ourselves, I had to resort to Google for directions. 

Serious Eats and My Korean Kitchen provided the world with outstanding recipes for Korean Sushi. Out of sheer laziness, I chose not to repeat their thorough instructions here.  But I would share with you, unabashedly, pictures of our first attempt at Korean sushi. You might be able to pick up a pointer or two on what not to do.

Here we had everything all prepped and ready to roll.

We had short-grain rice (seasoned with salt and sesame oil), cucumber, carrots, pickled radish, sauteed spinach and strips of scrambled eggs.

Rosalind liked to spread her rice sparse and thin and she didn't believe in margins. Some rice stuck on the mat.

Here you see somebody rolling the sushi and forgetting to keep the bamboo mat outside the sushi. More rice got stuck on the mat.

After a roll or two, we got the hang of it.

Sushi rolling is actually pretty straight forward, if you're the type of person who pays attention to directions.

And so, next up on Rosalind's list is Spam musubi, which has rice, teriyaki sauce and a slice of fried spam wrapped up in nori. Maybe she'll let me tuck in sauteed spinach between the sticky rice and spam.