Japanese Soufflé Pancake

I have heard so much about this soufflé pancake that I feel like I’ve have to try this to understand what all the hype is about. And you know what, it is as good as what I have read. It is so fluffy and soft, and for those who are on a diet, it has a lot less flour and butter than a regular pancake. I guess the right thing to do when you are on a diet is not to have any, but if you insist…. try this!

Ingredients
Meringue
2 Egg White
1/8 Tsp Cream of Tartar
1 Tbsp Sugar

Egg/Flour Batter
3 Tbsp All-purpose Flour
2 Tbsp Milk
! Tbsp Sugar
2 Egg Yolks
1 Tsp Vanilla Extract
1 Tsp Baking Powder

1. In a medium size bowl, add the egg white and cream of tartar
2. Whip the egg white with high speed, slowly add the sugar
3. Beat until stiff peak form, set aside
4. Beat the egg yolk with sugar until pale yellow
5. Next, add the milk and vanilla extract, whisk until mixed
6. Add flour and baking powder, mix until incorporated
7. Add 1/3 of the meringue to the egg/flour mixture, gently fold it in to the batter
8. Repeat until all the egg whites are mixed in
9. On a non-stick pan, very lightly brush with butter and heat the pan to very low heat
10. Add a scoop of the batter to the pan, cook with lid covered for a few minutes (Picture below, left)
11. Add another scoop on top, cover with lid for another 5 minutes (Picture below, middle)
12. Add a small scoop on top, and flip carefully, cover with lid again for a few more minutes (Picture below, right)
13. Ta-da! Yummy soufflé pancake is ready to serve!

Note: You can add matcha or chocolate or anything you like to make different flavors!

Cornmeal Waffle with Blueberry maple sauce

I have been craving for a good waffle breakfast lately, and decided I should make one! Finally have a relaxing weekend that I can just get up at whatever time, take my sweet time to make a good breakfast, and then sit and chill with coffee in my hand next to my hubby. My perfect Saturday morning.

Ingredients
3/4 Cup All-purpose Flour
1/4 Cup Cornmeal (I like medium-grind because it gives a better texture)
1 Tbsp Sugar
1/2 Tsp Salt
1/2 Tsp Baking Powder
1/4 Tsp Baking Soda
1 Large Egg
1 Cup Buttermilk
5 Tbsp Butter, Melted
1/2 Tsp Vanilla Extract
1/2 Cup Wild Blueberries
1 Lemon Zest
1/4 Cup Maple Syrup

1. Mix the dry ingredients in a large bowl (flour, cornmeal, sugar, salt, baking powder and baking soda).
2. Mix the wet ingredients in another bowl (egg, buttermilk, butter and vanilla extract).
3. Pour the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients slowly while mixing.
4. Let the batter sit for 15 mins.
5. While waiting, in a small pot, add the blueberries, lemon zest and maple syrup and bring it to a boil. Reduce heat and let it simmer for about 5 mins. Set aside.
6. Now, waffle making time! Heat the waffle iron, and coat it with butter. (I use a stove top waffle iron, but you can use whatever you have)
7. Pour half the batter on the iron, and let it cook for 2 mins.
8. Flip the iron, and let it cook for another 2 mins.
9. Serve with the blueberry maple sauce.

I love desserts and sweets, but at the same time, don't like things that are overly sweet (like most American desserts....). This is one of the main reasons I love maple syrup, it has a distinct flavor and mild sweetness. The blueberries and lemon zest add a little acidity to the sauce and make it just perfect!

Maple Walnut Scones

What's better than freshly baked scones on a Sunday morning! Instead of the typical maple glaze (which tastes so good but so guilty at the same time), I used maple sugar to give it a hint of the maple taste on top of the buttery nutty scones! This is a better recipe that I tried recently, therefore I updated this post. I normally make a batch of them, and warm it up in the toaster oven during the week. It stays good in the fridge for 1 - 2 weeks. They are usually gone before it hits 2 weeks because they are just too delicious! 

Ingredients

2 3/4 Cups All-purpose Flour
1/2 Cup Oat Flour
2 Tbsp Baking Powder
1/3 Cup Maple Sugar (maple sugar is not very sweet)
1 Tsp Salt
2 stick Chilled Butter, cut into cubes
1 Tsp Maple Extract
1 Large Egg
3/4 Cup Heavy Cream
1 Cup Walnuts, Coarsely Chopped

1. Preheat the oven to 375F.
2. Mix flour, sugar, salt, baking powder in a mixing bowl.
3. Cut the butter into cubes, and work it into the flour by pastry blender (use 2 knives if you don't have one)
4. Add the chopped walnuts to the flour mixture, mix it a little
5. Mix the heavy cream, egg and maple extract in a separate bowl
6 Add the mixture to the dry ingredients with your hands until incorporated. You should have a nice dough at the end.
7. Split the dough into 2 portions.
8. Flour the working space, press the dough into a circle, then cut into 8 slices. Repeat for the other portion of the dough.
7. Bake for 25 minutes, until the scones turn light brown.
8. Let it cool on rack for 10 minutes. While waiting, make yourself a pot of coffee. When it's ready, try not to eat all of them in one setting!

Liège Waffles (Gaufres de Liège)

I have finally bought a waffle iron!!! And of course as soon as I got it, I tried to make my favorite belgian waffle!!! And it was a great success!!! The recipe here is adapted from Sweet Amandine and Smitten Kitchen. The waffle iron I bought is a stove-top iron (it saves space), but if you have an electric one, it will work just as well!

Ingredients

2 Cups Bread Flour
1 Tsp Instant Dry Yeast
1/4 Cup Whole Milk
1 Large Egg, at Room Temperature
2 Tbsp Brown Sugar/Honey
3/4 Tsp Salt
3 Tbsp Water
8 Tbsp Unsalted Butter
2 Tsp Vanilla Extract
1/2 - 3/4 Cup Pearl Sugar

1. Warm milk and water to lukewarm, then stir in sugar and yeast. Set aside for 5 minutes.
2. Add eggs and vanilla extract to the yeast mixture, stir to combine.
3. Add 1 cup of flour and salt, stir to combine.
4. Add the butter, one tablespoon at a time. 
5. Add the other cup of flour, knead until dough is stretchy.
6. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and let rise in the fridge overnight.
7. Next day, mix in the pearl sugar into the dough. Separate the dough into 6 equal chunks.
8. Cover loosely with plastic wrap, and let it rise for 90 minutes, until puffy.
9. For stovetop iron: heat the iron over a medium-low flame for 4 minutes each side.
10. After the iron is warm, butter the iron a little, and transfer the dough ball to the heated waffle iron.
11. Close the iron and cook for 45 seconds, then flip to the other side.
12. Cook for 4 minutes. (I usually take a little peek at 3 minutes to make sure it is not burnt.
13. Transfer the waffle to a rack and cool for a couple minutes before serving.
14. Dust with powdered sugar for decoration.
15. Serve with ice-cream/whipped cream or anything you desired!

* For pearl sugar, if you just want slight sweetness, 1/2 cup is good, but if you have a sweeter tooth, use 3/4 cup. 
* You can get pearl sugar from amazon if you couldn't find it.

Quiche

I love quiche! It is simply one of the best thing to have for breakfast. (In my case, it can last several breakfast! Just need to warm it up in a toaster oven in the morning while you make coffee <3) There are so many different combinations of ingredients that you can put in the quiche that I am sure everyone can find their own favorite quiche. Below is a recipe that I modified from a couple recipes I found online.

Ingredients

6 - 8 Slices of Thick-cut Bacon, diced (depending on how fat you want to be lol)
2 Tbsp Butter
1 Small Onion, very thinly sliced
2 Boxes of Brown Mushrooms, sliced
5 Large Eggs
1 1/2 Cup Heavy Cream / Half & Half
1 Can of Artichoke/1 bag of Baby Spinach / Half bunch of Asparagus
1 1/2 cup of grated Parmesan Cheese
Salt and Pepper to taste
1 Whole Pie Crust

1. Preheat over to 400 degrees.
2. Fry the diced bacon, set aside.
3. Do not clean the pan and use the bacon grease to brown the onion. 
(If you don't want to, then dump out the grease and use butter, but I am telling you, the grease is the good part :p)
4. Then, add the other ingredients, mushroom, artichokes or spinach and cook for a few minutes.
5. Add salt and pepper to taste, set aside to cool.
6. In the mean time, whip the eggs, cream, cheese, salt and pepper in a large bowl.
7. Add in the bacon, mushroom, artichokes to the mixture. 
8. Add in the parsley.
9.  Roll out the pie crust and press into a deep tart pan.
10. Pour the egg mixture into the pie crust.
11. Cover loosely with foil and bake for at least 1 hour until firm.
12. Cool for 15 minutes before serve. 

I usually like to make things from scratch, so I also made my own crust. You can always buy it to save the hassle, but it does taste better when you make it yourself!

Ingredients

1 Large Egg
3 cups All-purpose flour
1 Tbsp White Vinegar (lemon juice can be used as substitute)
1 1/2 Cup Crisco Vegetable Shortening
5 Tbsp Cold Water
1 teaspoon of Salt

1. Mix the salt with the flour in a large bowl.
2. In a large bowl, using a pastry blender/your fingers, cut the butter into the flour until it looks like a wet sand mixture.
3. In another bowl, beat an egg, then pour it into the flour mixture.
4. Add the water and vinegar, and mix the ingredients until the ingredients are incorporated.
5. This is enough for 2-3 pies, so I separate the dough into halves and freeze one of them for next use.

Blueberry Lemon Pancake

To start off the day with some homemade breakfast! Blueberry lemon pancake! I make pancakes once in a while, usually Saturday/ Sunday morning. Unfortunately, it was never perfect. Either too thick or too thin, but today, I think I found the perfect ratio! Very fluffy and it tastes amazing.

Ingredients

1.5 Cup All purpose Flour
2.5 Tsp Baking Powder
3/4 Tsp Salt
1.5 Cup Buttermilk (Substitute: Milk + 1 tablespoon of lemon juice, let it sit for 5 minutes)
3 Tbsp Butter
1 Tsp Vanilla Extract
1 Large Egg
1/2 Cup Blueberry
1 Lemon Zest

1. Whisk the flour, baking powder and salt.
2. Mix the egg, buttermilk, butter and vanilla extract in a separate bowl.
3. Then, add the liquid mixture to the flour mixture, do not beat. Mix it gently, and if there's lumps of flour, it is okay. It will dissolve when you cook the pancake.
4. Add the blueberry and lemon zest. Cook with butter. (It makes the pancake coated with butter perfectly, with a little crust on the outside, and really soft inside.)

Serve with maple syrup. (It is just sooooooo much better than corn syrup)

Perfecto!~

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Today is Bruin's day! This is the day when all the prospective freshmen come to UCLA, and tour around to see if they like the campus. I am a graduate student mentor at the undergraduate research center, so we have a booth for undergraduate research, and we are there to answer questions they might have about getting into research at UCLA. Basically, our job is try to tell them our school is better than the other schools, at least in terms of undergraduate research opportunities.

A lot of students came by the booth and they all seemed to be very interested in getting into research. A lot of them are torn between going to Cal or UCLA. My "job" was to convince them that UCLA is a better choice. Most of them are pre-med (I hate pre-med..... we can talk about this later), and UCLA has a medical school whereas Berkeley doesn't, so UCLA is a better choice for most of them. But to be perfectly honest, I would definitely pick Berkeley, although both schools are going to provide them with equally excellent education. Berkeley just has a bigger name. When people hear that you went to Berkeley, they all go "wow!" and when they hear that you went to UCLA, they are like "cool, it's a great school". I hate to say it, but it DOES matter.

It ended at around 3:30, so half of my day was gone. Kinda tired from all the talking today (especially when you are saying the same thing over and over again), probably will stay home and chill tomorrow before Monday ( If Monday has a face, I would punch it.) Have a good rest of the weekend!