If no baking, go to a bakery

Today, I finally got to go to a place that has "bakery" in its name. Bakery is pretty rare around here. The place I went to is actually a little breakfast/lunch eatery place located in Cocoa Beach. It seems that all the bread they serve are home made! They have received many good reviews online, I think many locals and tourists both love this place.

What was surprising is the lady who served us were Japanese! She was a very nice and friendly person. I think that she part owns the restaurant. We even received box full of mini pastries and a loaf of bread at the end :D. I tasted few of these cute pastries when I got home, and they were tasty. I haven't tried the bread yet, but I am excited to try it!

Cheesecake gone weird

It certainly looks like cheese cake. But it's just kinda of...weird to me.

I love fluffy cheese cakes. I can't eat rich cheesecakes such as NY style cheesecake because it makes me feel overwhelmed with the richness after few bites. So I used the Cotton Soft Japanese Cheesecake recipe from Dianna's Deserts website. However, I arranged it too much that its not really the same recipe anymore.

I used Neufchatel cheese instead of cream cheese for the first time. I always wondered how this type of cheese taste like. Well, it looks just like cream cheese, maybe softer than cream cheese, and it has less fat than cream cheese! I'm not sure how to pronounce Neufachatel, but its such a cool name. The name has accent marks which I can't type here.

Next change I made is that I used sour cream. I had about half empty container of sour cream in the refrigerator, which I wish I could say is about to expire or something, but it has already expired for maybe over one month. It looked okay and it did not smell anything bad so I used about 1/2 cup of it.

I am used to making meringue now. I have fun folding the egg white and the batter. I put the whole thing in the oven thinking it will turn out good, and I started to clean up the mess. Than I saw the pile of flour and corn starch that I had sifted on the table across from where I stood. I totally forgot to put the flour in.

I heard that by not taking it out right after it finished baking will reduce the risk of shrinking. Although I did that, it still shrinked, not too much, maybe because it didn't have flour in it. After putting on some melted jam+water glaze and cooled down a little more, I tasted it. It was still a little warm. It seemed a lot like mouse or suffle. It tasted quite alright. However, the crust I made from leftover crackers were horrible! The water had seeped in through the spring-form pan and absolutely soaked the crust. It made it soggy and rubbery, ew!

Hopefully, the cheese cake will become not so much like mouse once it has cooled more. I will taste it again perhaps tomorrow! The glaze on cheesecake is pretty good. Maybe I will try different type of Neufchatel cheese cake sometime again, and next time I think I will pass putting the crust at the bottom.

Strawberry Short Cake

Strawberries were on sale at Publics, and they were 3 for $5! So many strawberries, but they are not so sweet. I figured I won't eat them all as is, so I decided to make strawberry shortcake. I haven't made this simple cake for... I don't know how long. I just remember last time I made it, it didn't turn out that good.

Today, I found a great sponge cake recipe, it is very simple and easy.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

http://cookpad.com/recipe/552012 (with pictures)

Here is the translation:

Makes 18cm round cake

Cake flour - 90g

Egg - 3

Sugar - 90g

Butter (melted) - 10g

Milk (room temperature to warm) - 20cc

Vanilla Oil - little bit

1. Sift flour, put it aside. Sift the sugar, put it aside.

2. Prepare the cake pan with lining it with parchment paper.

3. Put the egg and 1/3 of sugar in bowl, mix with beater. You can put the bowl on top of a pan with boiling water to have double boiler. It will be better when the egg mixture is warm...close to room temperature.

4. When the eggs get creamy, add half of the remaining sugar to egg mixture. Add the rest of sugar after more beating.

5. Beat eggs until fluffy.

6. Add vanilla, flour (separate in to 2 or 3 times) and fold with rubber spatula.

7. Add the butter and milk, fold with spatula.

8. Pour into pan, drop the pan from about 15cm hight for 3 times and let the air bubbles out. Bake for 30 min. at 350Degrees F.

(Recipe credit: ゆみさくちゃん)

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

The cake pan used for this recipe is smaller than standard size in the U.S. I used a round casserole dish, not sure exactly what size, that was smaller than my cake pan. Usually this type of sponge cake will taste really good when you brush on some syrup (Sugar, water, and maybe some liquor) after cutting the cake in half.

I put some grapes on top of the cakes today, but I do not recommend doing that. Maybe blueberries would taste better. Although grapes do seem like they are "berries." Are they??

Wait...this is supposed to be strawberry short cake. I have no idea why I even put grapes in the first place.

Hamburger and the bun

If eating fast food is unhealthy, is eating home-made hamburgers healthy? That's my question.
I just finished eating a hamburger that I made myself from the bun to the meat patty. Actually I just made the bun and the meat patty...I did not make the toppings. Anyway, it turned out quite nice. :D

I baked the buns last night, and it was pretty easy and simple. I used a recipe from cookpad once again. Because the recipe had no oil in it, I adjusted the recipe a little and added some egg to it.


The recipe is for 6 buns, but I dropped one dough ball on the floor, so I had 5. They were not too soft or not too hard. Perfect for hamburgers.

I had fried pork cutlets and onion rings yesterday, and today I ate hamburgers. I am eating too much greasy food that I do not feel healthy at all. So it turns out hamburgers even the one's made at home are pretty greasy, but maybe not as salty as fast food burgers so it is all good!