Is Fresh Pasta All It's Cracked Up To Be?

A friend (hello again Jenny), mentioned that her dad had just given her a fresh pasta maker, to which I excitedly informed her that making fresh pasta was a bucket list item for me. And with that, I embarked on my first pasta making experience.

Fresh Pasta

2 Cups of All-Purpose Flour

2 Whole Eggs

6 Egg yolks

1 Tablespoon of Olive Oil

Sprinkling of Salt

Albeit, my well broke early in the process as I was trying to incorporate my eggs into the flour, but I refused to panic and continued making my dough. After kneading my dough for ten minutes, I allowed it to rest for a little over an hour at room temperature while I went and picked my son up from school.

My eleven-year-old son got in on the dough-making action, and it was very helpful to have someone else turn the handle to roll the dough out evenly. The key to rolling out the pasta is to find your rhythm while you're turning that handle to avoid the dough bunching up or the pasta rolling out to thin. We immediately "fluffed" the freshly rolled out noodles in some flour to avoid them from sticking together.

So what was our verdict? Making fresh pasta noodles was not as intimidating as I had built it up in my mind. I definitely want to make more pasta in the future. Would I ever use the box of dried pasta noodles that I can purchase from my local grocery store? Definitely. Is it worth taking the time to make fresh pasta noodles? Definitely. The taste is superior even when it's the next day and you're reheating your meal. We served our fettuccini with a simple butter, garlic, pasta water, and parmesan cheese. The pasta water creates a sauce and a nice coating on the noodles, leaving them the star of the dish.

{All pictures were taken by Jenny Wilburn}

The Easiest Bread Recipe Ever {AND It's Vegan}.

Ten years ago, I was introduced to this recipe at a weekly toddler playgroup. The recipe comes from the book Artisan Bread In Five Minutes A Day. What I love about it, is how simple it is to make! I throw all the ingredients into a container and just keep it in my refrigerator for up to two weeks!

3 Cups Lukewarm Water

1 1/2 Tablespoons Granulated Yeast

1 1/2 Tablespoons Salt

6 1/2 Cups All-Purpose Flour

Throw all those ingredients into a container with a lid and it makes having fresh bread for a meal a quick addition. I also like to use this recipe to make my pizza crust with. 

My New Love Of Homemade Vegan Pizza.

The hardest thing about homemade pizza is finding the patience to wait while the dough rises for the crust. But making your own pizza from scratch is so satisfying, tasty, and easy on the budget. Plus, where are you going to find gourmet vegan pizza and know exactly what went into making it? We found ourselves at home on a Saturday afternoon and with the cooler temperatures, having a make your own pizza party was the perfect activity to warm us up and bring some laughter into our household. 

Since my 40th birthday, I'm been making more of an effort to eat a vegan diet so my two pizza's consisted of vegan mozzarella cheese and vegan parmesan cheese. This was the first time trying my hand at vegan pizza, and working with these two cheeses. I wasn't completely sure how the cheese would melt and end up tasting, but I was so happy with the end result. I've linked the cheeses I used at the end of this post that you can purchase on my Amazon site. 

The first pizza, I kept simple with an olive oil base with crushed garlic. I added both kinds of cheese, and during the last five minutes of baking, sprinkled fresh spinach leaves on top. The second pizza I added a fig jam spread for the base, caramelized onions that I made while the pizza dough was rising, both kinds of cheeses, and finished it off with a drizzle of balsamic vinegar after it came out of the oven. Both recipes were so simple and yet so flavorful.

Vegan Mozzarella Cheese - Amazon {here}  ::  Vegan Parmesan Cheese - Amazon {here}

Challah French Toast... Finding Out What The Hype Is All About.

Ina Garten sings praises to challah bread french toast and since the perfect loaf was staring me in the face at my local Publix grocery store, I placed it in my cart and took it home with me. Challah bread is eaten more frequently in Jewish households for ceremonial meals, such as the Sabbath. I'm not too familiar with the challah bread culture, since we did not grow up eating it in my house. However,  with Ina's recommendation in the back of my head and my love for carbs, I was a happy girl as I checked out of the store. 

Challah is an egg bread that does not contain dairy, and I found it to be deliciously soft to the touch. I sliced the bread into 3/4 inch thick slices and then proceeded to dip each slice into my regular french toast mixture of eggs, vanilla, sugar, and cinnamon beaten together. The end result was very tasty french toast, but was it the best french toast I've ever had? So many times the hype does not live up to the reality, so I was a tad bit disappointed. Don't go in to the experience with high expectations and I'm sure it would be a mind blowing meal. Would I make it again? Most definitely. 

Our Christmas Cookie For 2018.

Since we were back in the United States, we resumed our annual Christmas Cookie Exchange party and decided to combine it with an Ugly Sweater Party. These Candy Cane Kiss Crinkle Cookies were our contribution. It's probably a little risky to make a big batch of cookies for the first time that will be going to twenty different homes, yet here we were experimenting with how to make these cookies for the first time and have them turn out looking deliciously like cookies and not resembling candy striped nipples.  Here is our recipe and tips on how we made them. The key was to keep the dough cold... and the kisses frozen.

Candy Cane Kiss Crinkle Sugar Cookies
Oven Temperature 350F

3 Cups Powdered Sugar
2 1/2 Cups Butter
2 Large Eggs
2 teaspoons Vanilla Extract
6 Cups All Purpose Flour
2 teaspoons Baking Powder
1 teaspoon Salt
4-6 Peppermint Candy Canes
Granulated White Sugar 
60(+) Unwrapped Hershey's Candy Cane Kisses


In a large mixing bowl, with an electric mixer, combine the powdered sugar, butter, eggs, and vanilla. Beat at medium speed until creamy, scraping down the bowl often. 

Crush up the peppermint candy canes to desirable size in a plastic Ziploc bag using a rolling pin or mallet. 

In a separate bowl combine the dry ingredients (flour, baking powder, salt, crushed candy canes). Gradually add dry ingredients to the wet ingredients, scraping down the bowl until blended. Mixture will be crumbly.  

Shape dough into 1 inch balls. Immediately roll in granulated white sugar. Place dough balls on a cookie sheet and place in freezer until ready to place in the oven. This will avoid having the cookie dough spread out too much while baking. 

Place unwrapped Hershey's Candy Cane Kisses in the freezer until ready to place on baked cookie dough. As soon as the cookie dough comes out of the oven, press a frozen Candy Cane Kiss into the center of each cookie. The cookie dough will crack a little around the edges. 

Immediately place the cookie sheet with cookies into the refrigerator, ensuring that the Candy Cane Kisses will set quickly and not spread out and melt. This will help maintain their iconic Hershey's Kiss shape.  

Store in a covered container at room temperature. 

The Secret To The Perfect Pumpkin Pie.

It's probably a tale as old as time, but when you discover the truth for yourself, you can't help but shout it from the rooftops... or blog about it so your readers can take full advantage of your discovery for their Thanksgiving holiday meal! 

Fifteen years of baking a pumpkin pie every Thanksgiving, and I've finally learned to treat the filling as a custard while I'm baking it. Which means lowering the oven temperature and baking the pie low and slow for it to come out of the oven with no cracks on the top. This year, I also pre-baked the pie crust for the first time, so ensure that the crust was not soggy and remained crisp and flakey. 

These two tips have forever changed my pumpkin pie baking days for years to come! 

4 Simple Tips For Styling Your Own Cheeseboard At Home.

One of our favorite appetizers to serve our dinner guests is a cheeseboard out on the patio. A cheeseboard is an easy, simple, and informal dish that you can set out and then forget about while your guests serve themselves from it and you finish preparing your meal. What makes a cheeseboard so easy is that everything is on one board. Here are some of our steps to creating your perfect cheeseboard.

The first step is to pick out your wooden cutting board. Since we are in Hong Kong, our storage is small and we have one main large cutting board in our studio. It's a simple board in a rectangle shape, but you can use any shape you have on hand.

Once we have the board selected, we want to create a symmetry as we placed our food items on the board. A cheeseboard is very similar to setting a table centerpiece. It's all about balance, layers, and texture.

For our cheese selection on this particular board we chose a runny cheese like a brie and a salty cheese which was a nice bleu cheese. We like to pair the bleu cheese with something sweet, so we added some fresh figs and nestled them onto our board. Pointing the triangles of cheese out towards the edges of the board allows your guests to easily serve themselves. Typically, we would want to serve a goat cheese log and/or a sweet cheese that has some dried fruit in it on my board as well. It's all about flavor variations that excite the palate.

Since we had the fresh figs on our board we added some cured salami meat, and the balance of the salty and sweet play off of each other well. For a tangy bite, we added a bowl of olives that my assistant picked up from me from our local Chinese grocery store.

Fresh Fruit Crostata.

Is there anything better than a fresh fruit pie in the middle of the summer? With all of the fresh fruit in our home, my daughter and I thought it would be a great idea to make a crostata.

A crostata is a pie or tart and can either be sweet or savory. Like most of our cooking and baking, we did not use a specific recipe, instead we used what we had in our pantry. Our filling consisted of fresh apricots, blueberries, and pear. We also added some dried cranberries for some texture. The juice and zest of one lemon, sugar, flour (to thicken the natural juices of the fruit that bake out), and a pinch of salt.

We rolled our pie dough into a circle, placed it on the baking sheet, and poured our fruit filling into the middle of the dough. One of my favorite aspects to a crostata is the free form it has. We pulled the edges up around the sides of the fruit, creating a little basket or bed for the fruit to lay in while it baked!

Lime Shrimp Lettuce Wraps.

The other month, my husband came back from Korea where he and my son saw Paul McCartney in concert. The energy that Paul McCartney displayed up on stage for the three hour show convinced my husband to go as vegetarian as he could. So he became a pescetarian.

Yesterday, we went to lunch at a Thai restaurant with a group from our church. Someone order lettuce wraps with minced pork, and they looked delicious. That got me thinking about how I could make a twist on them so that my family could eat them. These lime shrimp lettuce wraps were born.

I'm not good at measuring while I cook, I tend to eyeball the ingredients and hope that it all turns out in the end. However, even though I'm not a precise cook, I wanted to share with you how we made these tasty wraps.

Lime Shrimp Lettuce Wraps

1       Green Bell Pepper
1       Red Bell Pepper
4 C   Shrimp (peeled and deveined)
1       Head of Garlic
2       Whole Onions
6       Limes (juice of)
3 T    Freshly Grated Ginger
3 T    Olive Oil
3 T    Soy Sauce
4 Bunches of Fresh Cilantro 
1 Head of Bibb Lettuce (or lettuce of your choice)

In separate bowl, combine shrimp, garlic, juice of 6 limes, freshly grated ginger, soy sauce, and olive oil. Allow to marinate for at least 1 hour in the refrigerator. Dice up the peppers and onions. Saute in a combination of olive oil and sesame oil. Add shrimp and sauce to the rest of the pan. Cook until shrimp is cooked and serve with lettuce. Garish with fresh cilantro.

Valentine's Day? What's That?

Valentine's Day in Hong Kong is overshadowed by Chinese New Year. This holiday is not pushed as much as it is back in the United States. We aren't even making cards to hand out to the other kids in my two children's classrooms at school this year. There are no heart shaped boxes of candy lining grocery store aisles, I have yet to discover any candy conversation hearts, and fortunately no cheesy teddy bears holding silk roses {I apologize if that is what you love getting for Valentine's Day}.

However, I still like to celebrate a holiday revolving around love. So as a special treat for our family, we made some mini pies in the shape of a heart.

The recipe is simple. A two ingredient treat of pie dough and raspberry jam.

Christmas Hot Chocolate Two Ways.

It's January but we still have a couple more posts from Christmas to share with you. As a family tradition, we love to spruce up our hot chocolate during the holiday season. In order for the hot chocolate to be quintessential Christmas hot chocolate, it always involves a candy cane stir stick. My preferred way to drink my hot chocolate is with whipped cream, sprinkles, and topped off with a red and white candy cane. My children love to have their hot chocolate with a colored candy cane and miniature marshmallows. Here's to happy drinking and to staying warm!

Morton Family Strata Recipe.

Meredith Morton and her throat-clearing tick had a great family recipe for strata that we have adapted into our own family tradition on Christmas morning. The Family Stone is one of my favorite holiday movies to watch every year and I was excited when the recipe for the strata was part of the DVD extra.  I hope you enjoy it as much as our family does.

8          Slices of white bread
8 oz.    Sliced Mozzarella cheese
2          Cans {14 oz size} sliced tomatoes {or sliced fresh}
13 oz.  Can sliced mushrooms, drained {or sauteed fresh mushrooms}
1          Medium onion, thinly sliced into rings
5          Eggs
3 C      Milk
1 tsp.   Salt
1 tsp.   Oregano
Pinch of garlic salt
Some Parmesan cheese
Some sliced black olives

Using a cookie cutter, a doughnut cutter, or the lid from a jar, cut bread into shapes or circles. Set aside. Place bread scraps in bottom of buttered 9" by 13" baking dish. Layer half of the cheese over the bread. Arrange half of the tomatoes and all of the onion rings and mushrooms over the cheese. Cover with the rest of the cheese. Arrange the bread shapes on the cheese. Put slices of the tomato in the center of each bread shape. Combine slightly beaten eggs, milk, salt, oregano, and garlic salt. Pour over the bread. Sprinkle with Parmesan cheese and dot with olives. Cover. Refrigerate for six hours or overnight. Bake 1 - 1 1/2 hours in a 325 degree oven, or until knife comes out clean. Let stand 5 minutes to firm. Serves 8.

Best Pecan Pie.

My friend, Molly, sent me her recipe for the best pecan pie. I knew it was going to be delicious because this recipe calls for evaporated milk, thus creating a wonderful caramel filling. This wonderful recipe makes two pies. Unfortunately for our Thanksgiving, I was not familiar enough with my oven, and my pies came out burnt. Against the advice from my assistant to not serve the pies, I put them out for my guests and they got devoured. That's when you really know a recipe is good... when you burn the pie and it still gets eaten!

3          Eggs
3 C      Light brown sugar
3/4 C   Melted butter
3 T      Flour
1         Large can of evaporated milk
1 T      Vanilla
2 C      Chopped or whole pecans

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Combine all ingredients and pour into pie crust. Bake until filling is set. Cool completely.

A Summer Sandwich.

I love a great sandwich. With July hosting holidays like Canada Day for our Canadian clients and The Fourth Of July for our American clients, there are a lot of sandwiches being consumed this month. For our beach picnic we made sandwiches by layering lettuce, tomatoes, and onions. Then we added chicken salad that we purchased from our local deli.

Sandwiches are all about the bread. Hamburgers, breakfast sandwiches, shrimp po boy's, panini's, you name it... the bread set the stage for the whole sandwich. We picked up half a dozen all natural white sub rolls from the bakery for this particular sandwich. 

Thank You BERRY Much.

It's strawberry season again in our area of Myrtle Beach. And like last year, we loaded up in the car and went out to the strawberry fields to pick our own. This year we picked three stockpots full of fresh berries. That's a lot of berries. I've already canned over a dozen jars and I'm debating about doing another batch. We used the same recipe that we used last year to make this jam.

We are planning on using the jam as gifts to say, "Thank you BERRY much" to all of our friends and family who are helping our family with our move to Hong Kong. We are also using the jam as thank you gifts for our kid's teachers, whom we appreciate so much!

Easter Brunch.

We are knee deep in packing boxes at our house. This has been a week of people traipsing in and out of our house, purchasing furniture that we can't ship over to Hong Kong with us. But in the midst of the chaotic mess of our home, I wanted to celebrate Easter Sunday with a special brunch for our family. We kept the menu simple. Individual potato cups with a baked egg and a jar of oatmeal with a mix of berries.

On a shopping trip with one of my assistants, I recently purchased hand painted wooden Easter eggs at an antique store. I love the soft pastel colors and the animal detail painted on to each egg. For our Easter brunch, we used colorful festive paper plates that we picked up from the dollar bin at Target. Since they were paper plates, we anchored them down with our white ceramic dinner plates which doubled as chargers.

The potato and egg cups were super easy to make. We used new red potatoes that we baked {in the microwave} and shredded while they were still warm, using our food processor with the grater attachment. We sprayed individual muffin tins to prevent any of the potato mixture from sticking to the sides. We then added a spoonful of the mixture to the tins, creating a basket or nest effect. We baked these at 400 degrees for 12 minutes. Meanwhile we sauteed some finely minced red onion in butter which we added to the little potato cups once they came out of the oven. The great thing about this dish, is that I was able to prep most of it the night before, so in the morning all I needed to do was crack the egg into the cup and put them in the oven for another 10 minutes.
   

3.14

Happy Pi Day. March 14th is also known as Pi Day. Personally, math has never been one of my strong subjects in school, however, I can always use an excuse to eat pie. We'll willingly celebrate the mathematical constant with some lemon meringue. This creamy recipe that we followed called for a can of sweeten condensed milk.We used the juice and zest of a couple fresh lemons. Topping the pie with billows of fluffy meringue makes for a gorgeous finish. When putting the meringue on the pie, the key is to seal in the edges at the crust.

Pipe Cleaner Heart Topper.

Are you thinking Valentine's Day yet? We thought it would be fun to feature fourteen Valentine's Day related posts on the blog. We got some great ideas off of Pinterest and tried to put our own spin on some really cute projects. So for our first feature, we are going with our family's go to chocolate chip cookie recipe. These cookies are so delicious that my husband will eat the whole batch over the span of just two days. We topped off these favorite cookies with a simple pipe cleaner heart topper. You could even include a little note with the sentiment, "You're the milk to my cookie".  

{Original inspiration for this project can be found here.}

Chocolate Chip Cookies
Preheat oven to 350 degrees

2 1/2  C     All purpose flour
1  tsp         Baking soda
1  tsp         Salt
2 sticks      Room temperature unsalted butter
1/2  C       White sugar
3/4  C        Packed brown sugar
1  tsp         Pure vanilla extract
2               Room temperature eggs
2  pkg       Dark chocolate chips

Sift dry ingredients together and set aside. In a separate bowl, cream together the sugars and butter until fluffy. Beat in the eggs and vanilla. Gradually add dry ingredients until dough is formed. Add chocolate chips to the dough. Using an ice cream or cookie scooper drop balls of cookie dough onto parchment paper lined baking sheets. Bake for 12 minutes or until cookies are light brown.

Dutch Baby.

Once we started having children, our New Year's Eve celebrations changed to fit our kid's schedule a little more. We spent this past holiday in our cozy house eating a homemade chicken pie, staying up late, toasting in the new year, enjoying a picnic in bed with the kids, and watching a pile of movies. We did celebrate at noon with our two kids and friends by attending a "Noon Year's Eve" party. A great party idea to help children who might not be able to stay up till midnight celebrate the holiday. At the "Noon Year's Eve" party, our kids enjoyed making noise makers, confetti poppers, a special balloon drop at noon, and toasts with friends.

I love traditions, yet our family doesn't really have any established traditions when it comes to a New Year's Eve celebration. I recently started making "Dutch Baby" pancakes for our family. It seems so festive to bring the cast iron skillet straight from the oven to the table before the giant popover pancake collapses. This year I thought it would be the perfect breakfast to start out 2014. I use Martha Stewart's recipe when baking. It's super easy to follow and you can get the directions right here. It's also easy to assemble the recipe the night before and have it ready in the blender to pull out of the refrigerator the next morning. I'm not sure about you, but it's always a little difficult for me to function before I've had a good cup of coffee, so anything I can do to help speed things along while I wait for my coffee to brew makes me a happy Mama. Give this recipe a try. It's a huge hit in our home with both my husband and my two kids. It will be one of the fluffiest pancakes you've ever eaten.

Simple Leche Flan.

Growing up in the Philippines, leche flan was such a special treat. My mom didn't know how to make it, so we treasured this dessert when friends gave it to us as a gift. It wasn't until I was married, that I learned how to make flan. I learned from my friend's mother-in-law who was an immigrant from Puerto Rico. A bunch of friends and I sat at the island in her little kitchen and she showed us the proper way to make this delicacy. Although the Philippines and Puerto Rico happen to be on opposite sides of the globe, both countries have a strong Spanish influence. I have one friend that I went to school with in the Philippines, that I make this for her every time we get together. She will go off of her vegan diet just to eat this. It is her special treat. And every time I make this, I also think of the Abuela who taught me this recipe. I remember her plastic covered couches in her home and how she taught me to carefully swirl the sugar as I melted it in the pan, making sure it didn't burn.  

Leche Flan

3-4     Egg yolks
1        Tin sweetened condensed milk
1        Tin evaporated milk
1 tsp. Pure vanilla extract

Mix the above ingredients in a blender until combined. In a dish that won't break with the heat, melt 1 cup of white sugar on the stove top until is turns a caramel color. Be careful the sugar does not burn. Add the blender of combined ingredients to the melted caramel. Place your dish in a bain-marie. Bake at 325 degrees for an hour to an hour and a half. Remove from oven and run a knife around the edge of your pan. Flip your flan over onto a plate, and allow the caramel to drizzle down the side of the flan. Allow to cool in the refrigerator over night.