dessert

Every now and then, I find myself thinking about our trip to Hawaii in September 2011. I had never been, and it was an amazing vacation. On our first full day there, we drove literally the entire way around the island and along the Road to Hana. We made stops in towns and I picked up a bag of candied coconut and a mini loaf of coconut pineapple bread at a spot with a couple of stores and a restaurant that served fried fish and fresh guava. I cut small slices of that loaf every morning for an after-breakfast treat, so the bread lasted us more than half our stay. I was really sad when the last piece was gone.

In my search for a recipe to try out my new Corningware Spice of Life loaf pan, I stumbled upon this Phyllis Coconut Bread recipe and was intrigued that the writer seemed to be referring to the same bread that we had in Maui. I went with the traditional way and did not brown the butter or toast the coconut, but I'm sure I will be making it again, so I'll try it other ways as well. In fact, I will pretty likely try to adjust the recipe for white whole wheat flour, though I haven't had much success with other recipes.

I bought a 14oz bag of sweetened (per the comments on the site) flaked coconut and did not use the entire bag, even though it is less than what is called for in the recipe. A full cup went into the batter, but I didn't add a ton on the top because I didn't remember my loaf being totally covered in coconut when we had it in Hawaii. Also, I didn't know how many pounds my loaf pan is, so I just filled it to the brim. That was probably a bad idea because it took forever (1 hour 30 minutes) to finish baking. Next time I might grease the pan with oil so the crust doesn't get so brown.

This recipe turned out great. Not exactly how I remember, but that's ok. It's still a really tasty piece of Hawaii when I start to miss it again.

Next up will probably be this Chocolate Marble Bread, which looks pretty challenging. Or Fresh Mango Bread, sans the raisins. Or this Better Than Starbucks Lemon Loaf.

After several trips to Mrs. Fields cookies in several different malls, I finally asked why no one had butter toffee cookies anymore. Turns out they discontinued my favorite Mrs. Fields cookie. So I went on a search to find a good copycat. This recipe on Food.com is the one I thought looked best of the few that I found.

I chilled the dough for about an hour as the recipe suggested. The recipe calls for salted but I only have unsalted, so I followed this advice and added 1/4 teaspoon of salt to my dry ingredients. I also conducted a little experiment with my cookie sheets and greasing options. I tried a half sheet pan with parchment paper, a half sheet pan with butter, and one of those Wilton air cookie sheets. I didn't notice a difference in flavor or texture between the different pans, but toffee is sticky stuff, so for these cookies, I'll use the parchment paper.

They turned out amazing! Even better than Mrs. Fields.

I made these chocolate-dipped strawberries following this recipe on King Arthur Flour. The recipe is super easy, and they turned out looking great! I did get a little excited and tried to drizzle dark chocolate on the white chocolate, but it didn't turn out quite like I imagined. Oh well, I put those on the bottom layer of the gift basket. I also learned that white chocolate burns in the microwave, so I had to start a new batch because I couldn't get the burnt bits out of the first batch.

I hope the recipients like them! ...If they don't, I'll eat them.

November 6 is National Nacho Day! I love nachos, so naturally I had to celebrate today. Unfortunately, I could not find my slow cooker, so we didn't have shredded pork tacos as planned. My salsa also was past the expiration date, and I found the plastic seal puffed up somehow. So I made the nachos vegetarian without sour cream or guac, but they are still delicious, though.

We also had brownies for dessert. I found John's Favorite Brownies recipe by Scharffen Berger on Cooking for Engineers.

We had a guest for dinner tonight, and DH said he wanted more spam musubi and katsu musubi. So I made chicken katsu, cut it into pieces and brushed some sauce onto the rice. It turned out really tasty!

I also made molten lava cake and served it with lactose free vanilla ice cream.

I made these chiffon cupcakes as a surprise for my husband on his birthday. I went to his office, surprised him with a couple friends and took him out to lunch. During lunch, I pulled out a junk mail-wrapped HDMI cable for the PS3 I had at home for him. He narrowed his eyes, then I asked if that didn't give it away, and reached into my bag for a junk mail-wrapped game. He didn't say anything, so I reached into my bag again and pulled out another game. "Jeez how many did you buy?" lol

After lunch, he went back to work and I went to the mall with one of the friends to kill time till my hubs could take off work. We went shopping to a couple stores, went to Mrs Fields for a couple cookies, then sat down and chatted. My husband met us at the mall, and we all went to see Bolt in 3D. What a great day =)

Notes: For the buttercream, I just used plain soy milk. I don't usually like buttercream frosting, but this one was good. I didn't put a lot on the cupcakes cause I like mine light on the frosting. I bought the disher pictured on the left to transfer the batter from the mixing bowl to the muffin pan, a la Alton Brown. Also, I used a hand mixer for all of this, not a stand mixer.