The Unofficial Cook

These are the two best ice creams I’d recommend to go with pies and pastries – Dreyer’s Vanilla Bean and Haagen-Dazs Dulce de Leche.

There’s nothing I will cook that can bring as big a smile to Spouse’s and Stepson’s faces more than Deep Dish Apple Pie.

It’s actually funny how I’m the one with memories of mother and homemade apple pie.  Anyone would guess I’d have memories of my mother and rice cakes, me being the Asian in the marriage…but my mother made apple pies when we were kids quite a lot.  My best memory is the smell of apples and cinammon filling up the whole house.  I also remember watching her pretty hands holding the two knives and cutting the shortening into the flour.  ”You have to handle it very lightly if you want a flaky crust,” she’d tell about four of  her six daughters standing around her while she moved around her bright and airy, aqua-colored kitchen.

Spouse is the American after all and we’ve all heard the old adage, “as American as apple pie…”  Apparently, his mom liked Cinammon Rolls better and she called it “Rolly Boys” to make the eating all the more fun for the kids.

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My best kitchen gadget is the Adjust-A-Cup Measuring Cup.  This thing is so amazing you’ll wonder why they didn’t come up with the idea sooner.

This is the perfect gadget for accurately measuring messy ingredients like shortening, butter or peanut butter.  With ingredients like these, you are always guessing whether you have an accurate measure because there is always that chance there’s a bubble in the middle of all the goo which you cannot see or do anything about.  Everyone who’s made peanut butter cookies knows what I’m talking about.  So here comes this measuring cup…no more mess, no more guessing. It has a clear plastic sleeve, and the adjustment is done with a flick of the wrist.  After you’ve measured your ingredients, you push the interior canister which acts like a plunger to push your ingredients out.  Cool, huh? [Read the rest of this entry...]

For a change, I decided to stray from the usual Apple Pie and made some Apple Dumpings using Rome apples a few weeks ago.  This was my first time to cook with Rome apples and I was pretty impressed with how the apples held up in the baking process.  I love the way it retained it’s shape and didn’t turn mushy like some apples will.  And I loved the way the apple turned a bit translucent after baking.  I really should have taken a photo of the inside of the dumpling to show how lovely the apples turned out.  I’ll do it next time.  [Read the rest of this entry...]