Quite possibly one of my favorite ways to consume bananas… in cake form and with chocolate! These cupcakes are so fragrant and scrumptious looking just sitting on my kitchen counter, I had to have one with my cuppa tea this morning. Okay I guess the tea was more meant to go with my cupcake than the other way around. I mean it’s a hearty breakfast right? There’s bananas in them!
I pretty much buy bananas with the intention of eating about 2 and then patiently waiting for the remainder of the bunch to ripe for a few days so I can make banana bread. I associate banana bread with breakfast because the cafe’s in Sydney served them as a breakfast menu item. Mmmm, toasted with a little bit of butter melted on top. Wish my local cafe here had banana bread as an option!
I adapted this banana cupcake recipe from Martha, adding a little here and there. I used my go-to simple chocolate frosting recipe because to me, banana goes with chocolate like peanut butter and jelly. Hope you like them as much as I do!
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Posted by: Maggie Ha
Category: baking, food, mmmm, recipes
Tags: baking, banana, chocolate, cooking, cupcakes, desserts, food, recipe, recipes, snacks, sweets
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Let me start off by saying… I don’t particularly love cheesecakes. When it comes to dessert choices, I almost always go for the fruit tart, anything chocolate or ice cream. But every once in a while… I just want a good slice of cheesecake with lots of crust. Vini has been requesting cheesecake to be put at the top of the “Please Make This For Me!!!” list for quite some time… so I played around with my Red, White & Blue Cheesecake and came up with this Raspberry Swirl Cheesecake.
My favorite part of any cheesecake is the crust. So I generally make crusts that go all the way to the top of the sides so there’s plenty of graham cracker goodness for every bite. The raspberry swirl is a perfect combination of tangy fruitiness to the rich creamy filling. This dish would be great for a dinner party, the pretty marbling will definitely impress guests! Cheesecakes are very time consuming and require at least 6 hours of refrigeration after all the baking is done but the result is definitely worth it. Bon appétit!
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Posted by: Maggie Ha
Category: baking, food, mmmm, recipes
Tags: baking, cheesecake, cooking, desserts, food, recipe, recipes, snacks, sweets
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So this is how it happened: I was out shopping for some boxes to organize all the stuff I have in my apartment. It started raining – I can’t buy cardboard boxes in the rain, that would just be silly. Across the street is Sur La Table. It is raining, did I mention that already? So I had to go in for some cover. They happened to have a sale. Two giant bags of baking toys later, I had to rush home to start making my tarts!
This dish has been on my mind for a while. Dark chocolate ganache tart with toasted pistachios and a pinch of sea salt on top. I’ve been on a pistachio kick lately and I think it goes really well with a dark bitter chocolate. I played around with several different crusts… yes I now have several different tart trays to work with… and the best tasting with this filling is “the great unshrinkable sweet tart shell” from Smitten Kitchen. Although mine definitely shrank. Graham cracker just did not taste right with this and neither did my chocolate biscuit crust, maybe too much chocolate with the dark chocolate filling.
Now this dish sounds pretty easy but it does take a lot of time. Please allow for time to chill the dough for the crust, bake it and let it cool (all in all about 4 hours). Then the ganache part will need another 2 hours to set so you’re talking some serious time commitment when making this. But it is totally worth it.
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Posted by: Maggie Ha
Category: baking, food, mmmm, recipes
Tags: baking, chocolate, cooking, desserts, food, recipe, recipes, snacks, sweets
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Summer is most definitely upon us. It’s been excruciatingly hot in NY the last few days. When it’s super hot out I can only think of cool refreshing dishes… like gazpacho soup and cucumber salads with drinks like lemonade, ice teas, mint juleps and mimosas! It’s so hot, I’d be happy with just a bucket of ice!
Today I made a quick snack that I just had to share, a very refreshing (and super simple) tomato salad with fresh basil. It’s so simple, you can’t mess it up. It’s a caprese without mozzarella. The key ingredient is really delicious tomatoes. When buying tomatoes, buy the ones on the vine still. And always store them room temp and not in the fridge. You can put them in the fridge if you know you’re going to eat them immediately, like a few hours before this salad!
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Posted by: Maggie Ha
Category: food, mmmm, recipes, salads
Tags: cooking, food, recipe, recipes, salad, snacks, vegan, vegetables, vegetarian
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Who doesn’t love pancakes? Especially on a Sunday… for dinner! What a perfect way to end the weekend. We’ve been craving pancakes for over a week and despite our delicious dinner, we just had to make pancakes before the weekend was officially over and we spend another week talking about pancakes. This is a super easy recipe to satisfy any pancake craving!
The best thing about these pancakes is that they’re super simple to make using ingredients that you can easily find in your pantry and fridge. Serve these with some scrambled eggs and bacon for a hearty breakfast. Or throw on some ice cream, fresh fruit, and powdered sugar and you’ve got yourself a great dessert. I have some variations to this recipe like, ricotta pancakes, buttermilk pancakes, blueberry pancakes, whole wheat pancakes and chocolate pancakes! Stay tuned!
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Posted by: Maggie Ha
Category: food, mmmm, recipes
Tags: breakfast, brunch, cooking, food, recipe, recipes, snacks
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Sometimes, I just feel like baking a cake. Luckily I keep a pretty stocked pantry so whenever this happens… Voilà! Cake! And that’s exactly how I stumbled upon making this deliciously moist chocolate cake last night. With an added touch of rum, it was the perfect dessert and night cap combo.
I was actually craving to bake cupcakes but when I went to get the trays I remembered that I just bought a new bundt cake tray that I haven’t even used yet. I used to make a variety of bundt cakes every week in college when I hosted Tuesday Night Dinners at my apartment. Back then I would have just used a cake mix from a box. I’ve thankfully evolved and honed my baking skills since then. This chocolate cake recipe is super easy. No more box mixes!
If you’d prefer a non-alcoholic version of the glaze, just eliminate that ingredient. The glaze will come out just fine without it. Although, the hint of rum does add something special to the flavor… and it’s the perfect night cap at 2 AM.
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Posted by: Maggie Ha
Category: baking, food, mmmm, recipes
Tags: baking, booze, chocolate, cooking, desserts, food, recipe, recipes, rum, snacks, sweets
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However much I like to complain about rainy days, it’s actually nice to have a stormy weekend in every once in a while. It means I have time to finally read a book, clean the house and cook some food. Boy did I take advantage of it! I’ve been meaning to make a coffee cake ever since I saw a sour cream recipe in some magazine on a flight. Can’t remember the magazine, can’t even remember the flight. But I remember craving coffee cake!
So since I had the time, I played around with some recipes. I was mostly curious about the sour cream and then added blueberries for… antioxidants. The sour cream gave it this amazing texture and kept the cake nice and moist. The best part is that this is SO easy to make! Unfortunately I didn’t have any vanilla ice cream to go with it but some berry sorbet was a different but tasty substitute. Hope you like it!
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Posted by: Maggie Ha
Category: baking, food, mmmm, recipes
Tags: baking, blueberries, cooking, desserts, food, fruit, recipe, recipes, snacks, sweets
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First off, I apologize for the recent lack of posts. Between the holidays creeping in and starting a new job, I feel like I barely have enough time to make tea! Luckily, this new job has a longstanding tradition of employees hosting a breakfast every Friday. This Friday is my turn!
I decided to make something simple yet jam packed with flavor. I would have liked to make one of my fritittas but it would be a little difficult transporting my cast iron to work! So I bring you, breakfast in one bite! Savory scones as a wholesome breakfast sandwich alternative. Well I can’t take credit for it, I got the idea from this little coffee shop I used to go to every morning in Sydney. I have been craving this for months but I finally have a good excuse to make a few batches.
You can really experiment with the ingredients but my all time favorite is tomato, basil and feta. Spinach and Swiss is a close second. I decided to make the tomato, basil, feta and a bacon, cheddar and green onion for the meat eaters. I’m much more of a savory person so this is my perfect breakfast all in one little scone. I hope the people at work like them as much as I do!
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Posted by: Maggie Ha
Category: baking, food, mmmm, recipes
Tags: baking, breakfast, cheese, cooking, food, recipe, recipes, snacks
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Packing up and selling all my belongings has got me in a bad mood. I haven’t been able to cook dinners lately or bake things or just eat normally. I looked at what’s left in my pantry and what’s left of my cooking toys… I have just enough to make peanut butter chocolate chip cookies. YAY! Finally something that won’t stress me out and something delicious to post! Can’t think of a better way to cheer myself up, peanut butter + chocolate.
I’ve been meaning to make peanut butter chocolate cookies for a while now, I think that’s why I have 2 extra tubs of peanut butter in the pantry. Luckily no one has bought my cookie sheets or mixing bowls yet. So a little whisking here, a little taste testing there… and we have peanut butter chocolate chip cookies. Since I’m a sucker for ice cream sandwiches, I had to try these in ice cream sandwich form. I think they might better than my usual snickerdoodle option! It might be a while until my next cooking experiment post so I hope you enjoy it!
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Posted by: Maggie Ha
Category: baking, food, mmmm, recipes
Tags: american, baking, chocolate, cookies, cooking, food, recipe, recipes, snacks, sweets
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I was really excited about my 100th post, so much so that I made alfajores to celebrate. I have been meaning to makes these for quite some time. I’ve always wanted to try Matt of mattbites.com‘s version because his photos look so scrumptious I want to eat the screen! But of course I can’t find store bought dulce de leche here so I had to make my own. I did it the cheater way 
simmering a can of sweetened condensed milk submerged in water for an hour and 45 minutes gives you delicious dulce de leche. I’ve always wanted to try that method! Sure the can could explode and I could possibly suffer burns but that’s the fun right? Okay to be honest I was scared the whole time. But the key is to keep the can completely submerged so it doesn’t explode. I used the biggest pot I could find and filled the entire thing with water… just in case!
So Alfajores… a delicious latin treat with two biscuits and dulce de leche in the middle. And then of course powdered sugar on top! I actually really liked the biscuit by itself with just a little sprinkle of powdered sugar. They’re a little cakey and not your usual cookie crunch. Almsot like a little pancake… in fact the house smelled like pancakes the whole time. Mmm I’m going to have another one now.
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Posted by: Maggie Ha
Category: baking, food, mmmm, Other, random, recipes, travel
Tags: baking, cookies, cooking, food, latin, recipe, recipes, snacks, sweets
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