Friend's great Christmas Party

My very good friend Nadia held a great Christmas Party at her home over the weekend, and she wanted me to bring the rectangle cheesecake after she saw one in this blog, so I've decided to decorate it with the marshmalllow snowman.

I also baked my recent favorate, a chocolate pecan pie. Both of them are my favorites.

The holiday season traffic was pretty heavy, but we finally got there and as I walked into the house, the main table was filled with great looking tasty food!

The first ones came into my sight were beautiful main dishes, ham and salmon.

Then follows other good looking side dishes such as salads, special rice, and bite size quiches.

Chicken and sauces were great, and the whole table just looked so beautiful!

I was so proud of Nadia.

Another thing I really liked with this party was that the idea of the cool drink bar. So many different drinks with cute ice container with fresh cranberries.

Each glass had a real leaf with a ribbon so the guests could write their name with a sharpie to identify each other's glasses.

I would love to use this idea if I have my own party in the future! :)

There were about forty people at the party and everyone was having great time with great food and decoration. Kids were having fun, too.

For myself, I was really glad to see people enjoying my cakes because making people smile with my sweets make me happy!

Celebrating holidays with great friends is always enjoyable and precious. Cheers to a great party!

Happy holidays to everyone, and have a great rest of the year 2008!!!

Christmas Decoration Class

Holiday seasons!

This time, I taught how to decorate cupcakes and cookies with Christmas theme. We made two kinds of cupcakes, and decorated two kinds of cookies.

The flavors of the cupcakes were vanilla lemon and carrot cake. Both baked very well.

There weren't enough time to bake cookies in class, so I baked vanilla and gingerbread cookies the night before and took them to the class for decoration.

Since this was everyone's first time to decorate cookies and cupcakes, it took more time than I planned, but many of them turned out very cute, and the class was very fun.

The cream cheese frosting with the carrot cake tasted very good, and the cookies were so cute!!!

This would be a good class to have in different seasons with different themes, so I would love to held more of them in the future.

Happy holidays!!

Company Christmas Party

Aibo-kun's company Christmas Party was held over the weekend, so we attended the party for the second time. When we attended the last year's party, it was right after I moved to CA and didn't know anyone, but this time, I could see a few people I know, so it was more relaxing and fun.

Here are the photos of the dinner served.


Blue cheese and pear salad. Since Aibo-kun cannot eat cheese, he got the one without cheese. (Thanks to the server!)

The main course was beef and white fish. The beef was cooked with red wine sauce, and the white fish was served with beurre blanc sauce. Accompanied with potatos, mini suqash, and other vegetables.

Dessert was key lime pie with coffee or tea.

The party was very simple, but it was nice to talk with other people, and have a holiday photo taken by the professionals.

Because of the slow economy, many companies have stopped having holiday parties, but I hope things will get better so people can share a happy time together again.

Appetizer & Hordorve Lesson

There was a request for fancy looking appetizers and Hordorves lesson for home parties, so I taught two kinds of terrines, a Vegetable Consomme one, and a salmon one.

We used fresh vegetables from a farmer's market. With the vegetable terrine, we made a dressing using citrus vinegar and maple syrup. This terrine holds together with gelatine cooled in a refrigerator.
With the salmon terrine, we made yougurt dill creamy dressing which also would go well with the vegetable terrine. This one was cooked in a water bath in the oven. Both of them were done right on time, so I was really relieved when we could try some after the class. Usually terrines taste better after sitting at least for over night.

While we waited for both terrines to be done, we made three kinds of hordorves.

The first one is buckwheat mini pancake topped with smoked salmon and creme fraiche. Creme fraiche is something similar to sour cream, but is lower in acidity and higher in fat. It is a common cream used in Europe.

The next one is America's favorite, "Deviled Egg". The name comes from "strong, spicy taste". In order to add the hot flavor, we used tabasco this time. The red color on the top is the sprinkles of powdered paprika.

The last one is mushroom tapanade. Sauteed mushrooms with different herbs, ground and spread over miniature toast. This one has a really good flavor, and it sure will become a nice accompaniment to wines.

All of these will be a popular starters for your holiday season parties!!

Thanksgiving Dinner

It's been a very hectic week for Aibo-kun and AKO because we moved to a new place. We started to move small things about a week ago, and oficially moved in the day before Thanksgiving.

While lived in Michigan, I usually cooked the Thanksgiving dinner at our place and invited friends over, but last year, I was working at a private country club, so from very early in the morning at work, we baked many many pies and cookies for the members' buffet and take home dinner orders.

This year, my really close friend invited us to her parents' home, so after cleaning our previous place, Aibo-kun and I joined the dinner. Since this is my first Thanksgiving in California, it feels a little weird not to have snow, but it is actually nice at the same time.

My friend and her sisters cooked the dinner this year, and everything tasted very good!

Turkey, cranberry sauce, stuffing, mashpotatoes, vegetables, etc... Both Aibo-kun and I were starving, so we ended up eating so much, probably too much!

Here are the pictures of the Thanksgiving yummy dinner!

Roasted Turkey is simple, but actually a delicate dish because it can easily get over cooked and dry. This one was very moist and had good flavor. Good job!

Not only they tasted good, but the table was very colorful with different types of dishes, and they looked pretty as well.

And last but not the least, can't forget the desserts! I was planning to bake pies, but since my kitching was not in a working condition right after the moving, I could not take any with me, but it was actually nice to enjoy the dinner all prepared by someone else!!!

Apple pie, pumpkin pie, toffee and chocolate truffles really filled me up! My friend made this really delicate tasty chocolate covered toffee, and it is literally addictive.

We had a great Thanksgiving dinner with lovely people, and it was a great escape from the moving work. Now Thanksgiving is over, here comes Christmas next!!!

Birthday Cupcakes

Six years old girl's birthday cupcakes to take to school on her birthday!

At the beginning, the girl's mother and I planned for buttercream decorated cupcakes, but then they received a notice from school that the sweets they give out to the classmates are preferred not to have too much cream on them, and the drinks should be healthy things like water or fruit juice.

Therefore, I baked cupcakes in two flavors, and decorated them with little icing and sprinkles of colored sugar instead of buttercream.

Since I still wanted them to look cute and girlish, but not too much, I went to different stores and finally found pink cupcake liners with white dots!

For the vanilla cupcakes, I added some lemon zests from the lemons picked from my friend's lemon tree to add flavor.

Colored the icing into a very pale blue to make a contrast with the other color.

The chocolate cupcakes are brownie type. No cocoa powder added, only the real chocolates, so they are very moist and full in flavor.

Topped with white icing with colored sugar sprinkles.

The girl's mother said these cupcakes were popular, and some of the mothers who tasted them enjoyed the flavor, too!

Another happy moment for me.

As a birthday gift from AKO, I made an iced sugar cookie with the girl's name on. It turned out into a very cute looking one with my signature royal icing flowers! This is one of my favorated docorated cookies among the ones I've decorated.

Happy Birthday H!!!!

Rectangle Cheesecake

I was invited to a birthday party, so asked the birthday person what she would like for her birthday cake since I've decided to bake one as her birthday gift.

Right away, my friend said "cheesecake"!!! She wanted a simple, no flavor added baked cheesecake. In order to add a giftlike looking to the cake, I made some gum paste flowers and leaves in addition to the usual chocolate plate.

Also, instead of making a usual round cake, I used the rectangle tart mold so it will be easier to serve the guests at the party.

Here is how it looks in whole.

The image of my friend's color is spring green, so I made the cake board with the pretty colored papers, and the flowers were made with the matching colors.

Instead of baking the cake over the common graham cracker base, I used some tart dough. This actually tasted pretty good, and my friend and the other guests really enjoyed it. When I served the cake, I plated it with some raspberry cream and people liked it as well.

However, I found out that the gumpaste flower does melt a little from the moisture of the cake, so I should try other methods in the future.

It always makes me happy to see other people smile when they put my pastries into their mouth and taste them. This turned out to be my happy day, too! Happy Birthday Friend!!!

Stories of Persimmons

A bag full of freshly picked persimmons arrived from my friend's co-worker's percimmon tree.
For some reason, I had an image that percimmon is a Japanese fruit, but it actually originates in China. Nowadays, persimmons are very popular in Korea as well, so you can find large, tasty percimmons at most Asian supermarkets.

There are two kinds of percimmons, sweet ones and bitter ones. It has something to do with the tannin, but not sure about the detail. The bitter ones are too bitter to eat as is, but my grandmother used to air them outside under the roof, and after a while, the percimmons dry out covered with white powders, and that is the sign that the bitter percimmons have turned into sweet dried fruits.

Of course, the ones I received this time were the sweet ones with less seeds, so all I had to do was to peel and eat!

There used to be a small park with percimmon tree next to my parents' house in Japan, and every fall, my brother and I used to pick them. The funny thing was, every year, the percimmons took turns in taste, sweet and bitter. For example, if they were sweet this year, they would be bitter next year. I'm not sure if that's an usual thing for percimmon trees to do, but we were surely disappointed in bitter years.

The sad thing is, the park is now gone, and a large apartment building is standing after where the percimmon tree was. Memory...

Here is the picture of percimmon tart I made earlier this year. Fresh ripened percimmon flesh over creme parissier filled tart shell. Maybe I should make one before Aibo-kun and I finish eating up all the percimmons!

Chestnut Rice ~ Kuri Gohan ~

As I planned the other day, I got more chestnuts, and instead of making more "shibukawani", I've decided to cook chestnut rice this time.

After returning home, I boiled the chestnuts for a few minuts, and let it soke until the water was cool enough to put your fingers in. This process will let the outer skin soften and makes it easier to peel.

When I just started peeling them, Aibo-kun got home earlier than expected with hungry stomach, but I really felt like eating the chestnut rice, and in order to prep dinner, had to finish peeling them.

Finally the peeling was done, and time to cook the rice! Washed the rice, added sake, soy sauce, and salt to add flavor, and cooked the same way as I usually cook my rice, in my favorite "Le Creuset" pot.

While waiting for the rice to cook, I prepped other side dishes like vegetables and soup.

Good quality "Tarako" (salted cod roe) was in my fridge, so I added some to our dish as well.

Then finally!!! Our dinner time has arrived.

Introducing a traditional Japanese dish, "Kuri Gohan" (chestnut rice).

Chestnuts kind of taste like Japanese yellow sweet potato (not yam), but has its own crunchiness remaining in this dish. It turned out so well, and Aibo-kun was so pleased, I should make it again before the chestnuts disappear from the store.

Debut in Korean Town

LA is a very international city, and for a foodie like me, it is very exciting because there are more variety of cuisines to choose from. I've tried Little Saigon, Little India, Little Taiwan (not sure if people really call it so) since moved to LA, but wanted to try out more.

This time, Aibo-kun and I got to explore Korean Town for the first time. Thanks to one of our friends whose parents are Japanese and Korean, we had a great first experience! It was amazing to see him order in Korean language. He speaks English, Japanese, and Korean perfectly, and both Aibo-kun and I were so impressed.

He took us to this restaurant that serves Pork Korean BBQ. According to him, pork is wallet friendly, tasty, and high in nutrient, so it is a very popular meal amoung young people.

Vegetables, Kimchi, Squid, and Korean pancakes were placed on top of the special table cookware, and slices of pork bellies were grilled in the center.

Besides what's on top of the cookware, cold soup, scallion salad, lettuce, and rice cake sheets were served. When the pork is ready to eat, you can wrap them in either rice cake sheet or lettuce, or even both!

I really enjoyed the taste of the rice cake sheet. Our friend told us that eating with the rice cake sheet was started in the US, then it becamse so popular that someone introduced it in mainland Korea, so now it's a common way to eat in Korea, too. It sounds just like California Roll which was invented in the US and now you can see them in some restaurants in Japan.
At the end, we ordered a single serve of rice, and it was fried with the leftover vegetables and meat with hot Korean miso sauce. That was very tasty, and great way to finish up the meal.

It is a very clean, nice restaurant and we would definately go back with more friends again.

Our debut in Korean Town was a success and can't wait to explore more.

Honey Pig
3400 W 8th St.
LA, CA 90005
Phone: (213)380-0256
Valet Parking next to the restaurant

Pumpkin Tart & Tofu Brownie

Here is another fall item. Pumpkins!!!

I saw sugar pumpkins lining at the farmer's market. They were really cute.

It was before Halloween, and I thought I should make something with these pumpkins.

So in a pastry class, I taught Pumpkin Tart and Tofu Brawnie. Usually punpkins are made into pies, but for this particular filling, I prefered using tart shells rather than pie dough.

Using a few kinds of spice such as cinammon, clove, and freshly ground nutmeg, the tart turned out very aromatic. To add some extra flavor, home made orange marmalade I made earlier this year was added and it matched very well with the other ingredients.

With the left over tart dough, we made them into different fallish shapes using cookie cutters so we could decorade our tasting dishes.

With Tofu Brownie, instead of using cane sugar, I used natural liquid sweetner such as maple syrup and agave nector. There is no butter used in the recipe, so it is healthy and less guiltiness!

This tart is not only for Halloween, but can be served at a Thanksgiving dinner or Christmas dinner as well. Very tasty, fallish sweet for the holiday season. Yummm...