opera tunes and dining at operacaffe in downtown san diego
I haven’t had much experience with Opera. When I was in high school, I took a class called “Theory of … Continue reading opera tunes and dining at operacaffe in downtown san diego
Tag: dessert
skylanders rainbow cake
For A.’s 13th birthday, I made her a Skylanders cake. A. and her brother S. got into Skylanders after S. … Continue reading skylanders rainbow cake
star dust donuts and searching for sea shells in imperial beach
Jake and I have driven by Star Dust Donuts probably 3 or 4 times now and every time it was closed.
They have crazy inconsistent hours:
But one magical day in early December, Star Dust was open!
Jake, the kids and I were heading down to Imperial Beach to collect sea shells for a present Jake was making for his mom for Christmas. Since we were going right by, Jake suggested we check and see if Star Dust was open and when I saw that it was, I did a little happy dance in the car. Finally, we could try it!
There wasn’t a whole lot of donuts left… so I just got one of each.
They had: Buttermilk Twist (.94 cents), Old Fashioned (.94 cents), Carmel Pecan Rolls ($1.59), Chocolate Iced with Nuts (.94 cents), Chocolate Raised (.94 cents) and Cinnamon Rolls (.94 cents).
They cost a little more than what you’d get at a regular donut shop, aren’t really fancy looking and pretty basic.
But man oh man, were they good! The buttermilk bar and the old fashioned were probably my favorite of the bunch – just simple, crunchy, melt-in-your-mouth donut goodness. The donuts tasted fresh and perfectly crisp. Very yummy.
I don’t have any other photos of the donuts since my camera died later! Probably from all of the photo taking I did at the beach.
We went as far south as you can go – all the way to the end near the Tijuana Estuary.
The sun was still up while we went to collect shells. The beach was pretty empty and it was pretty chilly that night – but the sky was beautiful. Continue reading “star dust donuts and searching for sea shells in imperial beach”
holiday baking recap 2012
I kind of slacked on doing photos for everything this season. But here’s a little Holiday Baking recap! It isn’t … Continue reading holiday baking recap 2012
making saltine candy “almost gourmet” for christmas
I’ve made saltine candy (also known as “caramel chocolate crackers“) for Christmas for a few years now. Last year, Stacey … Continue reading making saltine candy “almost gourmet” for christmas
lemon pistachio cookies – christmas baking begins!
This is one of my “maybe” Christmas cookies – I haven’t quite decided if this is going on the final baking list. Every year I always make at least one lemon treat because in the winter our lemon tree seems to always be exploding with lemons – and this year is no different. I decided to experiment ahead of time to see if this new recipe would be a winner for the cookie list this year – but I can’t decide! People seem to always really enjoy what I’ve made in year’s past, so it’s hard to decide what to mix it up with. Maybe you’ll have an opinion?
You don’t need too much for this batch – fresh lemons, pistachios, and the usual suspects: sugar, flour, eggs and butter.
Start by whipping that butter and sugar together in a frenzy. Frenzy, I tell you! Anything else and it won’t turn out as right.
Well… it probably will. But I just like to say the word “frenzy”.
After that, you must add eggs. And flour. And lemon juice. Continue with the frenzy.
Then, pull it off the mixer and fold in your pistachios. I suppose you can to this in the mixer, too, but I rather like doing it by hand.
Just a thing, I guess.
Then you take your lemon zest…
and mix it in with a half a cup of sugar. Mix and smoosh it together to make “lemon sugar”.
The lemon sugar is super sparkly and makes the cookies shiny and glittery!
You’ll take a ball of dough and roll it up and then roll it around in the sugar.
Then place it on your cookie sheet and slightly flatten out the cookies. You can use your fingers or a little spoon, like I did.
The cookies spread out a bit, so I did rows of 2 so they’d have a little extra room for expanding.
If you like a really nice lemony flavor, use extra lemon juice when making the dough. If you’d rather have a “hint” of lemony flavor without feeling like you’ve been punched in the face, use about 1 tablespoon of lemon juice instead. I kind of lean towards “punch me in the face” but not everyone is into that (ie: Jake).
I love how the sugar sticks to the cookies and create a glittery effect. It reminds me of ornaments and frosted things. The pistachios give a nice little crunch to this cookie as well. If you want a crispier cookie, cook these for a tad longer – otherwise, these have a soft inside with a light crisp edge. Get the recipe below!
Continue reading “lemon pistachio cookies – christmas baking begins!”
purple sweet potato pie
Purple sweet potatoes. I’ve never seen these in the store before or really even knew of their existence until I got a bag full of them from Frieda’s Produce. With Thanksgiving on my horizon, I figured I’d try a twist on the classic sweet potato pie – replacing the normally orange colored sweet potatoes for the vibrant purple variety instead. Take my hand and let’s go on a pie-making journey!
You can see a hint of their purple color in the skins alone, but the purple color becomes a bit more pronounced once you cut and peel the sweet potatoes. It seems to be almost jewel-toned in color. These were treated the same as any other potato – wash, peel, and cover with water and set to boil.
I felt like I was a witch with a cauldron full a of bubbling boiling potion after seeing my pot of water turn purple! The whole sweet potatoes simmer and boil away for about 45 minutes, until the potatoes are soft and you can easily stick a fork through them.
Drain the freakishly festive purple water to reveal your bright purple sweet potatoes. Mash them with a masher, fork, or other implement of your choice until the sweet potatoes are nice and smooth. You’ll still see a few strings sticking up, but it should smooth out further as you weave the mixture into a magical pie filling.
Add the beautiful things – like butter, sugar, milk, vanilla and spices – to your sweet potatoes in the mixer and churn away. Let it whirl and be amazed by the color yet again.
In a partially baked pie crust, pour in your Barney-like filling and bake at 350 degrees for 50-60 minutes until the edges are a golden brown. There seems to be a lot of cooking time going around here for this one, but you’ll love the end result!
Eat a slice and hope that you don’t start singing Barney songs. Share with family and friends as they ooh and ahh over the color then pat yourself on the back for such a brilliant idea. Continue reading “purple sweet potato pie”
winter spice cookies with pumpkin cream
A couple of weeks ago I was invited to a food blogger potluck hosted by CC of Pink Candles at Ridgemont High. I wanted to make a little dessert to go along with some pesto pasta salad that I made and I decided I wanted to make sandwich cookies – with pumpkin filling!
Except… well. The cookies didn’t come out as planned.
And neither did the pumpkin filling.
But, not wanting to waste my efforts and deciding that the cookies still actually tasted okay, I just went with it. And called them cookies with pumpkin dip. I let people assemble the cookies themselves since my pumpkin filling was way too loose to stay together in the cookie (hence, I called it “dip” instead).
The cookies have similar spices to pumpkin pie – so you could easily use pumpkin pie spice instead or adjust to your liking. The recipe is from a cookbook I got in a reddit gift exchange called One Girl Cookies. It originally calls for twice as much ginger with just a little cinnamon, but I love cinnamon, so I switched up the flavors a little bit.
The first thing that went wrong is that I rolled out the dough too thick. I haven’t rolled out cookies in forever, and for some reason I couldn’t remember what an 1/8th of an inch looks like. The cookies ended up puffing up and getting way too thick for cookie sandwiches, and I ended up splitting them open with a knife to make them sandwich cookie worthy.
The second mistake? Too much pumpkin in my filling. I could have “fixed” it with more powdered sugar, but it already tasted super sweet to me so I didn’t want to go that route. I added about 4 or 5 spoonfuls of pumpkin which was too much, so I adjusted my recipe below to 3 tablespoons, which should be about enough (though test it after two if you want a more cookie sandwich filling rather than a dip).
All in all though, the cookies were still pretty tasty. The cookies have a gingerbread-like flavor and spice and are a bit crunchy on the outside and softer in the middle (especially if you make a boo-boo and don’t roll them out thin enough like I did!). Continue reading “winter spice cookies with pumpkin cream”
yogurt swirl | shaved snow / mira mesa – san diego, ca
I had never even heard of Shaved Snow before I saw it on Jinxi’s and Kirbie’s blog. I was immediately intrigued by it. The shaved snow looked like ribbons of deliciousness and I knew I just had to try it!
Kirbie went to Yogurt Swirl which is about 2 minutes from my house and I knew it was destiny to finally try this luscious stuff.
Jake and I had the kids last weekend and I decided we needed to try this stuff, stat. I peeked at the menu and the Carmel Milk sounded like the best option for us to share. At $6.99 it seems like a hefty price to pay.
But once you see them make it and you see the size of your plate, the $6.99 price tag doesn’t seem too bad after all.
They have a special machine with specials blocks of the flavored ice for making your snowy, layered creation. The ice gets shaved off into these ribbons as the ice block rotates around.
I choice mochi and almonds as our toppings with complimentary condensed milk syrup on top.
The mound of shaved snow seemed really large at first… but we easily polished this sucker off in record time. Continue reading “yogurt swirl | shaved snow / mira mesa – san diego, ca”
stabby broken glass cupcakes for halloween
For Halloween this year, my work held a baking contest! I can’t tell you how excited I was about this. I started browsing around on Pinterest for ideas the day I found out the contest was happening to help me find a decorating idea. I stumbled upon some images of broken glass cupcakes… and I knew I wanted to do something similar to that.
I’d seen Dexter themed cupcakes with the glass slides and a dot of red in the middle, but I wanted to do something slightly easier than trying to make perfect sugar rectangles. The broken glass sounded challenging but without the requirement of symmetrical lines. Broken glass easily became the winner.
First I made red velvet cupcakes using Brown Eyed Baker’s recipe (but doubled).
Don’t you just love the color of red velvet cupcake batter? It’s so bright! And perfect for bloody, stabby cupcakes.
Once the cupcakes were done and cooling, it was time to start making the “glass”.
You basically just need to dump sugar, corn syrup, water and cream of tartar into a pan and mix it until it’s incorporated. It’ll look like a big, weird mess and you’ll start to think to yourself, “I have no idea how this is going to become candy.” Put your disbelief aside and crank that sucker until you get a hot, boiling mess.
Having a thermometer is pretty important when you’re making candy. I didn’t have a candy thermometer, so I had to steal the one out of our BBQ grill outside. Improvising: it works.
Make sure you’ve got a baking sheet ready (I put a silpat on the bottom of my baking sheet for extra protection) during the last stages of your candy making process. You want to start watching it like a hawk when it starts getting closer. Let your bubbling, hot, sugary mess get up to 300 degrees and then pull it off the stove.
Quickly pour the mass of sugar onto your prepared baking sheet.
Get every drop out!
And let your hot, sugary candy sit until it cools down. You’ll be able to feel it when it’s ready for the next step – it’ll be a little sticky but hard to the touch. I think I waited 15-20 minutes for it to cool down before moving onto the next step.
I first used a mini mallet (like the ones you use to crack crab legs) on the candy, but that made it far too splintered.
A butter knife ended up being my stabbing implement of choice – it created much better cracks and was easier to control as I broke up the glass. I tried to create a variety of sizes and pieces, often rebreaking larger pieces to create smaller glass-like pieces.
I stuck various sized pieces and shapes into the cupcakes creating shards.
Then I created an “edible blood” made with corn syrup, corn starch, water and food coloring to create a bloodied effect on top of my pristine, white cream cheese frosting.
The effect turned out quite well, making the cupcakes look like they were bleeding out from the stabby shards of broken glass.
My co-workers seemed to enjoy the cupcakes enough to award me first place that day – woohoo!
This is my first place prize – a mixer with a $50 gift card to Vons inside!
Want to make your own candy glass? Instructions below! Continue reading “stabby broken glass cupcakes for halloween”
gluten free dining at 2Good2B bakery cafe / encinitas – san diego, ca
Let me just say right off the bat… I was skeptical. A gluten free restaurant with baked goods and regular food? Could this possibly be any good? As someone who doesn’t shun gluten at all and doesn’t have food allergies, I wasn’t sure how this whole experience would go down. But since I got invited to come in and check it out, I was willing to take the risk. And I have to say… I was pleasantly surprised.
[inside the cafe]
2Good2Be is a cute little cafe inside of one of the strip malls in Encinitas, CA. It’s a fast casual restaurant with lots of beverage options (coffees, teas), baked goods (cupcakes, brownies, cakes) as well as regular food – all gluten-free, corn free, corn syrup free and soy free.
[case of gluten free cupcakes]
The cupcakes that greet you when you walk in also very tempting looking – all pretty and decorated!
Jake and I ordered a few things from the menu to get an overall feel for their food and then, of course, saved room for cupcakes at the end.
[bottled sodas]
My initial beverage choice was rejected by Jake and he went up and got us some bottled sodas. I told him to surprise me and he got me this Cock ‘n Bull ginger beer which wasn’t too bad. I don’t normally drink full sugar sodas anymore but this one was decent with a good ginger flavor. Surprising to me, I actually liked the Cheerwine a little bit more. I thought it would be full on in-your-face-tastes-like-cough-syrup flavored cherry.. but it actually kind of reminded me of Dr. Pepper.
[cheese pizza]
We started off by sharing a cheese pizza. I really liked the HUGE dollops of ricotta on top. Ricotta makes me really happy, so this put a smile on my face.
This also had tomato sauce, mozzarella and just a touch of basil. I would have enjoyed a wee more bit of basil, but it was fine. The crust was a gluten free crust that was quite thin (like NY style thin) and quite a bit chewy. The outer edges of the pizza were kind of burnt which I did not like since it made the other edge too hard to eat. But overall the crust wasn’t bad – you could tell this wasn’t a normal crust, but it didn’t deter too much from the pizza (except for the burnt edges). Overall good flavor and good distribution of cheese.
[macaroni and cheese]
Our other shared item was the macaroni and cheese, something we’ve really taken a liking to order whenever we see it on a menu. Continue reading “gluten free dining at 2Good2B bakery cafe / encinitas – san diego, ca”
free birthday food in san diego, ca / 2012 edition
I turned 34 this year. It’s not a significant number. I can still say I’m in my early 30’s but I think I’m just shy of being bumped up to the next demographic group. I sure don’t feel like 34, not that I can really imagine what it should feel like. In my 34th year I can say that I’m happy. I’m content. I have a job that I enjoy, a boyfriend I adore, and I don’t feel like I’m lacking anything. I’m hoping for good karma and continued happy times.
As I do every year, I look forward to my birthday instead of shunning it away. I drag out the celebration by getting a bunch of free, delicious food into my belly. Or maybe I like hearing strangers wish me a happy birthday when I present my coupons? (Truth: It is definitely the former.)
I kicked off the year by getting lunch at Rubio’s.
[Rubio’s Street Taco Plate – $6.59 value]
Rubio’s Beach Club sends you email offers as well as a coupon good for 1 item up to $7.99.
This is the Rubio’s Street Tacos plate ($6.59) with one chicken, one beef and one carnitas taco, plus beans and chips. Of the three, I liked the beef the best, though really, I probably should have stuck to seafood here since that is their namesake. The chips were warm (a plus that has not always been the case) with a decent side of beans.
Coupon notes: Sent two weeks before birthday. Expires on birthday. Can use your phone to show coupon or you can print it out. Rubio’s Beach Club signup.
Panera Bread also treats you for your birthday by loading a “special offer” onto your My Panera card.
They don’t tell you what the offer is though, but let me spill the secret for you – it’s good for one bakery item.
When I found out what it was, I think I gave a little bit of a pouty face because I said, “Aw, I really wanted a bagel.” The guy serving me though instantly said, “What kind of bagel would you like?” and I told him I wanted the pumpkin bagel. He went ahead and rang up a chocolate pastry in it’s place, letting me get my pined for pumpkin bagel. How sweet!
Coupon notes: Free offer is loaded onto your My Panera card. Expires 60 days after your birthday. I got an email notice about my special offer 4 days before my birthday. Can pick up a card in store or join My Panera online.
I have skipped El Torito in the past but I decided it was high time to try out this deal. I haven’t been to El Torito in ages, so I wasn’t sure what to expect. The nice thing about this one – the free chips and salsa!
[Tableside Fajitas Salad – $12.99 value]
Signing up for El Torito’s Email Club yields you a birthday coupon that’s good for one item up to $12.99 – no other purchase necessary. I opted to get the Tableside Fajitas Salad with chicken which clocks in perfectly at $12.99. The salad and the sizzling fajitas are brought tableside and tossed together right before you – you have the option to get the dressing on the side, too, if you fear too much dressing. I walked on the wild side and let them do it for me. The onions and other fajita goodies are also tossed in with cojita cheese, chunks of avocado, roasted pepitas, pico de gallo, tortilla strips and a serrano-grape vinaigrette. Overall very delicious and fresh. I was surprised at how tasty it was!
My waiter also brought me a mini flan! Probably the cutest mini flan ever.
Coupon notes: Sent about 1 week before birthday. Expires 1 week after birthday. Doesn’t specify, but I printed this one out. El Torito Email Club signup. No other purchase required. Good up to $12.99.
[Mini Club Supreme with roast beef, turkey, swiss, bacon done “Mike’s Way”]
This is another one of the deals I haven’t used in years past because I thought I didn’t really like Jersey Mike’s. I went a couple of times when they first started popping up in San Diego and I tried their hot sandwiches – which I didn’t like. This time around I went for a cold sandwich and found it to be a much better experience.
The meats and cheeses are sliced fresh when you order your sandwich. I got the Club Supreme (roast beef, turkey, swiss, bacon) and I got it “Mike’s Way” – which is with lettuce, tomatoes, onion, mayo, olive oil and vinegar, oregano, salt and pepper. The cold sandwiches are way better than the hot ones with the fresh slices of meat and cheese. The bacon was also surprising good – very crisp and it tasted like real bacon, not like those flimsy pieces of “bacon” found in fast food restaurants. Glad I finally decided to drop in and get this deal!
I actually got the “mini” sub because I didn’t want to eat a regular sized, but this deal is good for the regular sized sub.
Coupon notes: Coupon emailed about 1 week before your birthday. Can only be used on your birthday with the printout and photo ID. Good for any regular sized sub and a drink. Jersey Mike’s Email Club signup. No other purchase required. Continue reading “free birthday food in san diego, ca / 2012 edition”