Sunny Side Up Egg

It never occured to me that someone might not know how to make a  sunny side up egg until my sister and her husband had this “discussion” in my kitchen.

Sister:  “You make your eggs too rubbery.”

Sister husband:  “You use too much oil and deep fry your egg.”

As a disclaimer, I have to say that I understand that sunny side up eggs generally are yellow and are not cooked on top, but I don’t consider this egg “over easy” because I don’t flip it and the cooked layer on top still has some of that gooey goodness of the sunny side up egg.  So, for all of you egg deep friers, and all of you rubbery egg makers, here’s how I make my sunny side up eggs.

Ingredients

An egg

1 tbsp of oil

4 tbsp of water (roughly)

soy sauce to taste (or salt if that’s what floats your boat)

Directions

1.  Get out your non-stick shallow frying pan.

2. Turn up the heat to medium low. I can’t stress enough how important it is to cook your eggs on medium low heat. High heat will make your eggs get that disgusting plastic like, brown edge that’s almost inedible.

3. Add your oil.

4. When the oil is hot, add your egg.  See how the edges are slowly cooking towards the center instead of bubbling like a crazy egg?

5. When the egg has somewhat stabilized add your water.

6. Then quickly covered it up with a lid to steam!  Can you see the steaming? I wish I had a better camera sometimes, or maybe someone who could take the pictures as I’m cooking. It sucks to be constantly picking up the camera at every freaking step. Anyway.

7.  Watch your egg because the top of the yolk will steam white pretty quickly.  Then voila! (I don’t know how to do accents off hand on my keyboard, so I just won’t.) You have a perfectly soft, delicately scrumptious, oozy gooey, sunny side up egg.

I like my eggs with soy sauce. I’ve seen people eat them with ketchup or salt, but I’ve never gotten into it. Nope, soy sauce it is for me, and soy sauce it’ll always be.

NOTE: I broke the steps up like crazy. This isn’t hard or complicated. The entire process takes about 3 minutes including taking the pictures and heating the pan:)

Cheers,

Cheryl

Cinnamon cookies dipped in chocolate with orange blossom marshmallow filling.

Phewf, now that title sure was a mouthful!  But then, so are these bits of deliciousness, and this huge ass recipe for that matter.  Read the whole recipe before you begin because it’s LONG. I made these cookies in three parts over three days since I have a baby and a toddler at home, which means I can only bake for about 1 hour at a time including prep and clean up.

Day 1 was making the cookie dough. (10 minutes)

Day 2 was rolling out the cookie dough, baking it, making the marshmallow, piping it out, and leaving it to set. (1 hr)

Day 3 was dipping the cookies in chocolate. (20 minutes)

I stole this recipe from the Food Network by Gale Gand and tweeked it a bit. I mean a LITTLE bit. The recipe is pretty good as it is, but I have a really hard time keeping to recipes!

Cookie-Ingredients

3 cups flour
1/3 cup sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
3/4 teaspoon baking powder
pinch baking soda1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon12 tablespoons butter
3 eggs, whisked together
Homemade marshmallows, recipe follows
1 cup melted Chocolate  or 2 cups chocolate chips

*1/2 cup icing sugar (confectioner’s sugar) for dusting.

Cookie-Directions

Blend the flour, sugar, salt, baking powder, baking soda and cinnamon  in a mixer fitted with a paddle attachment.

Add the butter and mix on low speed until it looks like sand or cornmeal-ish texture.

Add the whisked eggs and mix to combine. I kept mixing the dough in my mixer and it didn’t come together. So I dumped it all out on my counter and kneaded it a bit until it came together. It took about 3 minutes.

Form the dough into a disk, wrap and refrigerate at least 1 hour and up to 3 days. I had way too much dough because I made my cookies small (about 2 cm diameter, 1/8 inch thick), so I used 3/4 of the dough and threw the rest into the freezer.

When ready to bake,  line a cookie sheet with parchment paper or a nonstick baking mat. Heat the oven to 375 degrees F.

*On a lightly “floured” (remember to use the icing sugar here!) surface, roll out the dough to 1/8-inch thickness. Use a cookie cutter to cut out small rounds of dough, 1 to 1 1/2 inches. Transfer to the prepared pan and bake until light golden brown, about 10 minutes. Let cool to room temperature. Watch your first batch. My oven runs hot so I only had to bake the cookies for 8 minutes. 9 minutes made them too crispy, and 10 minutes burned them.

Pipe  marshmallow onto each cookie and cover with another cookie. Let set at room temperature for 2 hours. My husband and my little girl ate one right away. Soft gooey marshmallow on a cookie is delicious!

Excuse the messy house in the background! I'd like to give some excuse for how messy we are, but I have none.

Line a cookie sheet with parchment or a nonstick baking mat. I covered a portion of my counter with saran wrap instead. Make sure not to leave any wrinkles in the saran wrap! My counter is granite or marble, I can never remember, so saran wrap sticks to it like glue.

One at a time, gently lower the  cookies into the warm chocolate. Lift out with a fork and let excess chocolate drip back into the bowl. Place on the prepared pan and let set at room temperature until the coating is firm, about 1 to 2 hours.

My girl being very happy to get her cookie

Can you see the saran wrap??

Note: if you don’t want to make your own marshmallows, you can cut a large marshmallow in half and place on the cookie base. Heat in a preheated 350-degree oven to slump the marshmallow slightly, it will expand and brown a little. Let cool, then proceed with the chocolate dipping.

Marshmallow – Ingredients

1/4 cup water
1/4 cup light corn syrup
3/4 cup sugar
1 tablespoon powdered gelatin
2 tablespoons cold water
2 egg whites
1/2 teaspoon orange blossom water

Combine the water, corn syrup, and sugar in a saucepan, bring to a boil until “soft-ball” stage, or 235 degrees on a candy thermometer. If you don’t have a candy thermometer, or have one that doesn’t measure heat well like I do, then get a spoon and drip a small bit into a very cold glass of water. If drip forms a ball  that is squishy (that’s a technical term) when you..uh..squish it, then you’re at the soft ball stage.

Meanwhile, sprinkle the gelatin over the cold water, stir it, and let dissolve.
Remove the syrup from the heat, add the gelatin, and mix.
Whip the whites until soft peaks form and pour the syrup into the whites.
Add the orange blossom water and continue whipping until stiff. Don’t worry, the mixture WILL stiffen up. Just keep your mixer cranked on high until it does.

Transfer to a pastry bag and pipe onto cookies. It’s easier to get the soft marshmallow in the bag if you stick the bag in a cup or something to hold it up.

I had extra marshmallow left over so I made letters for our names. I love piping!

Chocolate coating – Ingredients

2 cups milk chocolate chips

Chocolate coating – Directions

Put the chocolate chips in a microwavable bowl and microwave for 40 seconds, then stir.

Repeat the micorwaveing step in 10 second increments until you get your desired consistency.

NOTE: some people add butter or oil to the mixture in order to thin out the chocolate mixture but I didn’t. I wanted a thick coating on my cookies.

Enjoy!!

Cheryl

Christmas Stollen

Christmas Stollen

Thanks to Penny from Sweet Sadie’s Baking for giving us this challenge!!  I’m not a huge fan of fruitcakes but this one wasn’t so bad.

Ingredients: (adapted from Penny’s Stollen Wreath recipe.)

¼ cup (60ml) lukewarm water (110º F / 43º C)
2 packages (4 1/2 teaspoons) (22 ml) (14 grams) (1/2 oz) active dry yeast
1 cup (240 ml) milk
10 tablespoons (150 ml) (140 grams) unsalted butter (can use salted butter)
5½ cups (1320 ml) (27 ozs) (770 grams) all-purpose (plain) flour (Measure flour first – then sift- plus extra for dusting)
½ cup (120 ml) (115 gms) sugar
1/2 teaspoon (3 ¾ ml) (4 ½ grams) salt (if using salted butter there is no need to alter this salt measurement)
1 teaspoon (5 ml) (6 grams) cinnamon
3 large eggs, lightly beaten
Grated zest of 1 lemon and 1 orange
2 teaspoons (10 ml) (very good) vanilla extract
3 Tbsp orange/lemon juice
1 1/2 cup mixed dried fruit
1/2 cup  firmly packed raisins
2 tablespoons rum
1 cup (240 ml) (3 ½ ozs) (100 grams) walnuts
Melted unsalted butter for coating the wreath
Confectioners’ (icing) (powdered) sugar for dusting wreath

Note: If you don’t want to use alcohol, double the lemon or orange extract or you could use the juice from the zested orange.

Directions:

Soak the raisins
In a small bowl, soak the dried fruit in the rum/orange/lemon juice mixture and set aside.

To make the dough

Pour ¼ cup (60 ml) warm water into a small bowl, sprinkle with yeast and let stand 5 minutes. Stir to dissolve yeast completely.

In a small saucepan, combine 1 cup (240 ml) milk and 10 tablespoons (150 ml) butter over medium – low heat until butter is melted. Let stand until lukewarm, about 5 minutes.

Lightly beat eggs in a small bowl and add lemon and vanilla extracts.

In a large mixing bowl (4 qt) (4 liters) (or in the bowl of an electric mixer with paddle attachment), stir together the flour, sugar, salt, cinnamon, orange and lemon zests.

Then stir in (or mix on low speed with the paddle attachment) the yeast/water mixture, eggs and the lukewarm milk/butter mixture. This should take about 2 minutes. It should be a soft, but not sticky ball. When the dough comes together, cover the bowl with either plastic or a tea cloth and let rest for 10 minutes.

Add in the mixed peel, soaked fruit and almonds and mix with your hands or on low speed to incorporate. Here is where you can add the cherries if you would like. Be delicate with the cherries or all your dough will turn red!

Sprinkle flour on the counter, transfer the dough to the counter, and begin kneading (or mixing with the dough hook) to distribute the fruit evenly, adding additional flour if needed. The dough should be soft and satiny, tacky but not sticky. Knead for approximately 8 minutes (6 minutes by machine). The full six minutes of kneading is needed to distribute the dried fruit and other ingredients and to make the dough have a reasonable bread-dough consistency. You can tell when the dough is kneaded enough – a few raisins will start to fall off the dough onto the counter because at the beginning of the kneading process the dough is very sticky and the raisins will be held into the dough but when the dough is done it is tacky which isn’t enough to bind the outside raisins onto the dough ball.

Lightly oil a large bowl and transfer the dough to the bowl, rolling around to coat it with the oil. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap.
Put it in the fridge overnight. The dough becomes very firm in the fridge (since the butter goes firm) but it does rise slowly… the raw dough can be kept in the refrigerator up to a week and then baked on the day you want.

Shaping the Dough and Baking the Wreath

1. Let the dough rest for 2 hours after taking out of the fridge in order to warm slightly.
2. Line a sheet pan with parchment paper.
3. Preheat oven to moderate 350°F/180°C/gas mark 4 with the oven rack on the middle shelf.
4. Punch dough down, roll into a rectangle about 16 x 24 inches (40 x 61 cms) and ¼ inch (6 mm) thick.

Starting with a long side, roll up tightly, forming a long, thin cylinder.

Transfer the cylinder roll to the sheet pan. Join the ends together, trying to overlap the layers to make the seam stronger and pinch with your fingers to make it stick, forming a large circle. You can form it around a bowl to keep the shape.

This was before I pinched it together

Using kitchen scissors, make cuts along outside of circle, in 2-inch (5 cm) intervals, cutting 2/3 of the way through the dough.

Twist each segment outward, forming a wreath shape. Mist the dough with spray oil and cover loosely with plastic wrap.

Proof for approximately 2 hours at room temperature, or until about 1½ times its original size.
Bake the stollen for 20 minutes, then rotate the pan 180 degrees for even baking and continue to bake for 20 to 30 minutes. The bread will bake to a dark mahogany color, should register 190°F/88°C in the center of the loaf, and should sound hollow when thumped on the bottom.

Transfer to a cooling rack and brush the top with melted butter while still hot.
Immediately tap a layer of powdered sugar over the top through a sieve or sifter.
Wait for 1 minute, then tap another layer over the first.
The bread should be coated generously with the powdered sugar.
Let cool at least an hour before serving. Coat the stollen in butter and icing sugar three times, since this many coatings helps keeps the stollen fresh – especially if you intend on sending it in the mail as Christmas presents!

When completely cool, store in a plastic bag. Or leave it out uncovered overnight to dry out slightly, German style.

Yay! I’m happy to be back!

It’s been over a year since I last posted and I’m happy to be blogging again.  I stopped when I found out I was pregnant last December, then I got a new job in March, then I delivered a HUGE and healthy baby girl, now she’s sleeping 4-5 hours straight a night, and so BOOM! I’m back to blogging!

Hope you all (all 4 of you that is ) enjoy the new recipes!

Cheers,

Cheryl

Chocolate Rice Crispies on a stick!

Because isn’t EVERYTHING better on a stick?  This is an easy rip off of Bakerella’s cake pops.

Ingredients

1 bag of marshmallows

1/4 cup butter

1/2 tsp vanilla extract

6 cups rice crispies

3/4 cup chocolate chips

1 1/2 cups melted red chocolate coating

25 candy sticks

Method

I write method but really, you’re just making rice crispies circles and sticking a stick into it.

Anyhow…get your pan of choice lined with parchment paper, tin foil, or saran wrap.

1. In a large non stick pot, melt the butter and marshmallows on med/low heat. Make sure you stir the mixture continuously so that you don’t scorch the mixture.

2. Add the vanilla when the marshmallow/ butter mixture is melted.

3. Dump in all the rice crispies and chocolate chips and mix.

NOTE: I added in the chocolate chips at this stage and they all melted! I ended up with a chocolate rice crispy chewy goodness instead of a vanilla flavoured snack with chocolate chips mixed throughout.  If you want chocolate chips in the mixture, wait until the mixture has cooled down and then add the chips.

4. Wait a few minutes (I waited about 5) for the mixture to cool and then start rolling them into balls and put a stick in them.

5. Melt your red chocolate coating chips.

These are the chips I used.  Two pics, same chips, one with a flash.

The red chocolate chips weren’t as red as I wanted but I didn’t feel like adding food colouring so I stuck with the pink.  I stuck the chips in a bowl and nuked them for 1 minute on high. If you’re not familiar with how your microwave melts chocolate, nuke the chips in a bowl in 10 second increments until all your chips are melted. You can burn chocolate and that’s not a nice thing to do!

6. Dip your rice crispy balls into the chocoate, drip off any excess, and stand them up on parchment paper. I also used saran wrap because I didn’t feel like cutting more parchment paper. Yes, I am that lazy.

You see that long caramel stick thing in the back right hand top corner? I’ll be posting about that little mistake soon

So there you go! A simple Valentine’s Day snack for kiddies

Cheers,

Cheryl

Chow Fan (Fried Rice), Bacon Wrapped Eggplant, Eggplant Stir Fry with Black Bean Sauce, Tofu with Soy Sauce and Olive Oil.

The whole shebang.

 

This is my first day at my parents house and I’m taking every opportunity to take pictures the dishes we’re making.  Tonight we had, Chow Fan (Fried Rice), Bacon Wrapped Eggplant, Eggplant Stir Fry with Black Bean Sauce, Tofu with Soy Sauce and Olive Oil. This is straight up Chinese home cooking. None of the General Tao, Spring Roll, Sweet and Sour Chicken type of food you get at the Buffets of which I will not mention here!

 

Ingredients:

1 carrot

3 green onions

4 cups day old rice

1 Tbsp ginger

2 eggs

2 Tbsp Vegetable Oil

3 Tbsp Soy Sauce

 

Directions:

1 carrot: diced

3 green onions: rough chop

1 Tbsp ginger: minced

If I were making this at home, I’d omit the ginger (because I don’t like it), add 2 diced cloves of garlic, 1/2 cup of frozen peas, and 1/2 cup of frozen corn.

 

 

4 cups cooked rice

Fresh rice doesn’t really work well with Chow Fan because it makes the dish soggy.  Also, my preference is for Long Grained Scented Jasmine rice.  However, you can use whichever rice you have on hand!  Just make sure to break up the rice with your hand before you “Chow” it so that you don’t rip the grains to pieces.

 

 

 

 

 

Heat a pot with 2 Tbsp of vegetable oil.  Once the oil is hot, throw in your veggies but reserve half of the green onions for later.

Hehe, like the pot? My mom kept saying, “Don’t show the handle” (b/c it’s broken off), or “The picture would be nicer with a stainless steel pot!”  This pot is old school durable. I think it’s been around for at least 28 years!

 

 

 

 

 

Once the oil is hot, add the veggies.

Reserve 1/4 of the green onions for later.

Saute until the carrots soften.

If you’re using garlic, you can add it at this stage.  If you’re using frozen corn and peas, reserve them for later.

 

 

 

 

Push the mixture to the side of the pot and add the two eggs.

My mom lets them cook a bit and then scrambles them into the veggies.Then she adds the rice, and the soy sauce and the rest of the green onions.

You could always make scrambled eggs first and then add it to your veggies. You could also make an omelet, cut it up into cubes and add it to your veggies, or you could scramble the eggs right into the veggies without cooking them on the side first.  There are just so many ways to add your eggs!!  Experiment and have fun with it.

 

 

 

 

Yummmy!! I love Chow Fan. There are so many way to personalize this dish, and there really isn’t a “perfect” or “best” way to make it.  The flavours in your Chow Fan will completely depend on your taste.

Since my husband and I are meat eaters, I would have added whatever kind of meat we had left over from our previous night’s meal.  If we didn’t have any left over meat, I would have quickly defrosted some shrimp or scallops (since my little girl loves shrimp and scallops), cooked them separately with some salt and pepper, and then threw them at the end of the process.

(Like the little China girl plate??)

 

 

 

 

Egg Plant Wrapped in Bacon

This is so pathetically easy.

Ingredients:

2 Chinese Eggplants

1 Package of Bacon

 

Directions:

 

Cut the eggplants into 1 inch pieces.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Cut the bacon in half lengthwise.

 

 

Wrap the eggplants in the bacon and set on a wire rack.

Make sure that the bacon ends overlap.

Bacon is pretty stretchy so don’t worry about pulling on it a bit.

Also, make sure that the overlapping ends are on the bottom side so the little packages stay closed!

Cook in a preheated oven at 375F for 30 min.  I like my bacon crispy.  If you want it more crispy, leave it in the oven for a longer amount of time, if you want it less crispy, take it out earlier.

 

 

 

 

Yeppers!! That’s it!  These are so delicious. You don’t have to add salt on them since the bacon is salty enough.  They’re great appetizers since they’re small enough to just pop in your mouth!

Oreo Pops

Oreo Pops!

 

I love Bakerella, and so, I love her Pops!  I’ve been wanting to try my hand at them for a while but haven’t found the time.  So, when my husband went to his Christmas party (I stayed home with our daughter), I invited some friends over to make dinner, dessert, cocktails and some Pops! I chose Bakerella’s Oreo Pops since it’s Christmas and I like Pretzels .  To make a long story short (because my sister said I write too much before I show my pictures), we had a great time designing the Pops!

Ingredients: (Pops)

I package of Oreo Cookies

5 oz Cream Cheese

Candy Stick

Ingredients: (decorations)

Chocolate Candy Coating

White Chocolate Candy Coating

Candied Fennel Seed

Chocolate Covered Sesame Seeds

Pretzels

Mini-Marshmallows

Red Jelly Beans

Toothpicks

Directions:

Dump the entire package of Oreo cookies and a quarter of the cream cheese  into a food 

processor.  Blend, blend, blend!

I found that my pops were kind of soft and oily.  If I make these again, I’m going to take out some of the fillings and process the cookies without them.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Roll the mixture into balls, insert a stick, squish the balls onto the stick to make them adhere better, and refrigerate for at least a half hour.

Melt your chocolate candy coating in a bowl that will be deep enough to dip your entire pop.  It’ll make coating the pop easier. I didn’t measure the amount of chocolate candy coating I used.  I bought about 2 lbs of it and filled up a small bowl.  I microwaved the coating in the bowl on high for 30 seconds, checked it to see if it was melted, stirred it, and then continued nuking it at 10 second intervals until it was liquidy enough to work with.  If you’re using the chocolate disks, make sure to stir them as they will keep their disc shape even if they’re melted!!

 

 

Then take the undecorated pops out of the fridge and cover them in the chocolate candy coating.

 

Make sure to tap your pop on the side of the bowl in order to get ride of excess chocolate.  OR, you could patiently hold your pop upside down and wait for the excess chocolate to drip off!

 

 

 

 

 

 

If you choose the “hold and drip” method, make sure that your pop is securely adhered to the stick.  If it looks like this, then you’ll have a drowning pop in your lovely bowl of chocolate.

I forgot to tell my friend to “squish” or “squeeze” her oreo balls onto the stick.  She merely inserted the stick and put them on the tray.  This is what happened to many of her pops!  It was both a good and bad thing. We got to learn something (which was good), we didn’t have as many pops to decorate (which is bad), and we got to eat all of her “drowned” pops as soon as they fell of the stick (which is good!).  So really, the experience was more good than bad

 

 

 

Then, we let the pops dry in Styrofoam.  

I brought my husband to the store to buy Styrofoam and other decorating supplies.  He was appalled by the fact that I was going to spend $4 on a block because he said that we get Styrofoam for free with all of his electronics.  I ended up using Styrofoam that was left over from a TV or something.  It was really hard to stick the sticks in! My girlfriend Ceci got a Bamboo Skewer and made some makeshift holes for us to use which make the whole process a heck of a lot easier.  I guess it was worth saving the $4.

Once the pops are dry, you can start decorating! We didn’t plan it this way but, we ended up making pops in pairs.  What do I mean? Our pops were either dating, or married   We’re such girls.

Mr. and Mrs. Rudolf.

The Winter Couple.

The French Couple. Like the pipe?

Mrs. Frankenstein. I don't know why we didn't get a picture of Mr. Frankenstein!

If I were by myself, I wouldn’t have the patience to make Pops, however, they’re a great thing to do at a party!

Cheers,

Cheryl