French Vanilla Cake 2

I baked a cake to celebrate Wyatt turned 1 month old.

Ingredients

• 1 box of Betty Crocker Super Moist French Vanilla cake mix (instead of using water, I used milk; instead of using oil, I used butter)
  
• 1 bottle of Target's Market Pantry heavy whipping cream
  
• sugar powder
  
• vanilla extract
  
• 1 canned of mixed fruit
  
• blue food coloring for the whipping cream
  
• blue sugar for decoration

I used two 9" cake pans as usual.

Watermelon Baby Stroller

  

Tonight I cut out a watermelon baby stroller for tomorrow's baby shower. It was easy and fun. The only thing I did wrong is cut too much off of the bottom. oops

It only took few minutes to cut out the shape but took awhile to scoop out the watermelon. I used the melon scooper to do it. If you want to do it faster, you can just cut out into pieces.  

Mango Pudding

I made mango pudding in the afternoon for tomorrow's baby shower. It was super easy and fast to make.

Ingredients

In a bowl combine

• 1 cup of hot water
• 1/2 cup of sugar
• 3 envelopes of Knox gelatin

In another bowl combine

• 1 cup of cold water
• 1 can of mango pulp
• 1 can of evaporated milk

combine both bowls and mix well

I pour the mixture into pudding cups and then put them in the refrigerator.

Grilled Shrimps

Ingredients

• shrimps with shell on
  
• olive oil
• salt & pepper
• sesame oil

The night before I soaked shrimps in olive oil with salt and pepper and added a little bit of sesame oil.



Then the next day, I just grilled them. It's very simple and taste good. The shell gives it a nice flavor.

Stir Fried Shrimp

Ingredients

• ginger - thin sliced
• green onion - chopped
• shrimps (head-on)
• hon dashi
• rice wine
• olive oil

First put olive oil in the wok, add ginger, and then add shrimps. When the shrimps are semi cook put some hon dashi (you can add more to your taste) and a little bit of rice wine. When the shrimps are fully cooked, you can add green onion.

Red Velvet With Cream Cheese Frosting

I made my first cupcakes with frosting.

I followed Karen's recipe except adding less sugar, confectioners' sugar, and omit red food coloring.

Ingredients

Makes 12 cupcakes

• 1 1/4 cups flour
• 1/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1 stick butter, softened
• less than a cup sugar (about 3/4 cup)
• 2 eggs
• 1/2 cup sour cream
• 1/4 cup milk
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Vanilla Cream Cheese Frosting

• 4 oz cream cheese
• 1/4 stick butter
• 1 tablespoon sour cream
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• about 4/5 cup confectioner's sugar

Chocolate Cake

I felt like baking a cake tonight.

Ingredients

• 1 box of Betty Crocker Super Moist Devil's Food cake mix (instead of using water, I used milk; instead of using oil, I used butter)
• 2 cartons of heavy whipping cream
• hot cocoa powder
• sugar powder
• vanilla extract
• fresh strawberries as filling
  
• Oreo cookies
• Whoppers
• candies (1 tiny Reese's peanut butter cup, 1 miniature Hersey's chocolate with rice crispy)

I used two 9" cake pans. This time I used a cake leveler to cut the cakes, so they are flat (easier to work with).

I don't know how to pipe, so they don't look even (but I was having fun) :P .

I don't know what to put on the cake, so I just crushed few Whoppers, 1 tiny Reese's peanut butter cup, and 1 miniature Hersey's chocolate with rice crispy and put them on the top.

After that the cake still looked boring, so I added 6 Oreo cookies.

When Ethan saw the cake, he kept saying "Wow!". You can see his arm in the picture.

Spring Rolls

I made some spring rolls so Eric can eat them as lunch. It's been hot these few days and eating spring rolls is refreshing. It is easy to make spring rolls, just time consuming.

Ingredients: shrimps, mint, rice noodle, rice paper


1. cook rice noodle
2. wash shrimps, cook shrimpsI
3. wash mint
4. after noodle and shrimps are cooked, prepare warm water for rice paper

I put shrimps first, then mint, then rice noodle, and then wrap them up.

I made my own sauce.

Ingredients: hoisin sauce, peanut butter, 1/2 lime, little bit of hot water

if you have crushed peanuts, you can use it too

Minced Meat

I made minced meat "肉燥" for dinner.

Ingredients

• soy sauce
• brown sugar
• ginger
• garlic cloves
• garlic powder
• rice wine
• pickled cucumber
• minced / ground pork, eggs

I usually just add whatever I have at home. I added soy sauce, brown sugar, ginger, garlic cloves, a little bit of garlic powder, tiny bit of rice wine, pickled cucumber, and of course minced / ground pork. I also put eggs so they'll become "滷蛋".

French Vanilla Cake

After reading Pink's blog, I really wanted to make my own cake too. I went to Trader Joe's last night but they didn't have cake mix. Today, we went to Food 4 Less and I just bought a box of Betty Crocker Super Moist French Vanilla cake mix. I also got fresh strawberries for the topping and filling. They have two 9" cake pans for sale so I grabbed that too.

Instead of water, I used milk and instead of using oil, I used butter. One of my cake was lop sided and it's a little burnt on the bottom. While cake was cooling down, I made whipping cream by using heavy whipping cream. I added about 4 teaspoons of sugar powder. I forgot to buy vanilla extract so I used French vanilla syrup instead :P I added a bag of unflavored gelatin to my whipping cream.

I had a hard time putting the whipping cream on the cake evenly. I guess I'll need to buy tools next time. But over all, I think my cake turned out good. It taste decent, not dry and not too sweet.

Broken Glass Jell-o

I followed the recipe on Pink's website and did disolve each box of jello into 1.5 cup of hot water (according to Pink, it's too sweet if only use 1 cup of hot water). I made 4 colors of jello-o last night (berry blue, strawberry, lime, orange). This morning I cut them up into cubes. I dissolved 2 envelopes unflavored gelatin in 0.5 cup of cold water then added 1.5 cup of hot water with the condensed milk. I put those cubes of jell-o into a pan and then poured all the condensed milk into it.

I'll see how it turns out later. I am going to bring it to Kaichi and Jason's house tomorrow.