There are SOO many different types of flours – cake, bread, whole-wheat, pastry, and an assortment of nut flours. But here, we used all-purpose. Different flours have different levels of gluten and protein. For example, cake flour has less protein and gluten, making your cakes turn out soft and moist, while bread flour has more gluten, resulting in a tougher, chewier texture perfect for baguettes! All-purpose is right in the middle. So it’s perfect for pies! And you can either have un-bleached or bleached, but the only difference is that the bleached flour is whiter. I recommend King Arthur’s All-Purpose Flour.
Then, the fat.
Butter, lard, shortening, the fat battle… – image link
There’s butter, lard, and shortening.
Butter has the most water, and is the hardest to work with. (You can easily overwork)
Shortening has a lot of moisture, but not a lot of water. There’s no flavor, but it’s easier to work with than butter.
Lard is the easiest one to work with, except, since it’s pig fat, it comes with a piggy sort of flavor. It makes a beautiful dough, but really, it’s better to have a dough that tastes better than it looks.
We used butter, in this instance.
Blind baking:
Blind baking is only used if you have a liquid-y dough, such as our cooked berry filling, or custard filling, or even pudding-like fillings.
You prick the prepared dough all over with a fork, and then put a sheet of parchment over it, and then pour in pie weights (these could be beans, expensive ones from Costco, or just some little stones). Bake the pie crust for 10 minutes in an 400°F oven.
Then you remove the pie weights and parchment, and bake for another 10-15 minutes, or until just nicely golden brown. You’ll smell it!
When you’re working your pie, everything needs to be cold, even your hands.
Simple ingredients:
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1/8 teaspoon salt (a pinch!)
8 tablespoons unsalted butter (cubed and cold!)
3 – 4 tablespoons of water (or until a dough forms)
It’s best to pour the mixed flour and salt on a countertop, since you have the area in which you can fully maximize your kneading skills (but not too much!). Add the cubed butter in and pinch them until they’re pea-sized, and the mixture is slightly yellowed. Form a well in the middle of the mixture. Add water, 1 tablespoon at a time, until a dough is formed! Flatten the dough into a disk a refrigerate for at least 30 minutes. The dough can be refrigerated for up to 2 days, and can be frozen for about 3 – 4 weeks!
That’s all for today! For the fillings, there are so many variations, and the recipe I got was only a little fraction of that. Pie, for now!
I love China almost as much as I love the US. That’s where all my relatives are, and dumplings, and red packets! I’ve only been to two or three cities in China, since all my family live near the capitol, Beijing. But I have to say, it’s like my home away from home. There are so many cool things to do all over China, but for today, I’ll just focus on Beijing.
Beijing is a bustling metropolis. Though the air quality isn’t the best, the food certainly makes up for it. At Beijing, there are so many food options from all over China, and even an occasional McDonald’s or KFC.
松鼠桂鱼 – Squirrel Mandarin Fish
Ok, ok. This dish DOES NOT have squirrels in it. Trust me. It’s like sweet and sour chicken, but with a whole fish. A fish is first rid of its scales, then its meat is chopped up into little squares that stick out of either side of the fish. The fish is then completely covered in eggs and then, when it’s fried, makes a high popping sound that is similar to that of a squirrel’s. Then it is covered in delicious sweet and sour sauce.
This one is really commonly found in Chinatowns across the US. The duck is baked until golden brown, having all the freshness of he herbs seep in to the meat before baking. They use sugar water and pour it all over the duck after all its insides have been removed. Then they hang the duck in a cool, ventilated place, so the duck skin gets dry, and it usually hangs for hours. They then put different types of wood into the oven, and roast it, after pouring boiling water into the pan in which they roast it. After baking, the duck is brushed with some sesame oil to increase the golden-brown color of the duck skin. They cut the meat into little flat disks, and usually eat it with sweet soy bean paste, scallions, and a white bun. Or they just eat the meat alone.
Lastly, there is a dessert that’s usually eaten on 元宵节, the Lantern Festival. It’s called 汤圆, or tangyuan. They are little balls made out of sweet glutinous rice flour, and usually filled with black sesame filling, and then boiled. They can be eaten for breakfast or for dessert, and they usually come with a sugary “soup”. Really good. You can also find them with different colors and all kinds of other fillings, from sesame filling, all the way to peanut butter. They are best eaten when warm, and enjoyed with the soup as well. Just be careful! Don’t let the filling ooze out unexpectedly! (I learned that the hard way…)
I love Japan. Almost everything about it. The Japanese stationary, the Japanese car that my family drives, and especially Japanese food.
I feel like a lot of Japanese food comes in small packages. In my Chinese family, sure, we make some dumplings that are technically “packages”, but in Japan, there are sushi, mochi, taiyaki, tempura. And in some of the Japanese restaurants that I have visited, there are cute medium-sized bowls of ramen, poke, and other yummy food. It’s so nice! I like savoring a little meal package of flavor that coats all of my taste buds. Or maybe finger food just hasn’t caught on with my family. But nevertheless, Japanese food is pretty good.
I love one kind of sushi – California roll. I know, I’m American, I was born and raised here, and that’s the only kind of sushi I’ll eat, unless some other sushi has tempura and spicy/sweet sauce on top. I’m pretty picky about my sushi.
There’s also an ice cream dessert pretty popular here. Two, actually. There’s mochi, a nice little round ball of sweet glutinous rice flour, and a nice, shockingly cold filling of ice cream, usually in many different flavors (vanilla, chocolate, matcha, and sometimes even coffee). There’s also taiyaki, a fish-shaped dessert that eaten just by itself or filled with red beans or custard in Japan, but here, in a famous store known a Taiyaki NYC, it is served with a lot of ice cream. It’s good either way…
There’s also some other pretty cool Japanese desserts such as the famous Japanese jiggle cheesecake, yummy coffee jelly, which used to be very popular in British and American cookbooks, and even crêpes! (pretty popular in Japan now, I think)
Some famous Japanese foods are sushi, ramen, poke, tempura… the list goes on forever. But sushi is one of my favorites. And ramen, of course. If you ever go to Japan, you have to get a good bowl of ramen. That’s what I want to do! (Haha, quote me on the ramen bowl thing!)
Thanks to another dedicated follower, I have decided to write this post. I have been to France only once, and during that trip, I also visited Geneva, Switzerland, and Amsterdam, Netherlands. Though those photos are buried deep somewhere in iCloud, I hope I can dig up some for you guys to see.
So we arrived in Paris, France, at around 3 pm, and immediately went to sleep, waking up at 5pm to go eat out. We didn’t really eat a lot of authentic foods while we were at France, sadly, and the place we went to was pretty bad, the spaghetti really tough and uncooked. But at least the ice cream was good! (Ice cream in French is la glace.)
The next day, in our hotel, we had a nice breakfast of buttery, flaky croissants (that I personally haven’t made yet), silky hot chocolate, and cafe au lait (coffee with milk). It also came with apricot and orange jam, and some cut up baguettes and sourdough boules from a local bakery. All in all, it was a satisfying meal.
We went out to the Versailles, and stuff we ate there wasn’t too good. The eclairs that I bought from a “high-scale” bakery were too sweet, and I felt like they were more “quantity over quality” type of place, which I did not like. We also walked around the Champs de Elysees, a famous street where the prime minister lives on. It was kind of like the French version of New York City. There were big, towering shops and that squeezed small businesses into little nooks and crannies. We went to a Haagen Dazs store, where the ice cream is homemade, and there are many flavors. we also stopped by a macaron store, but weirdly, we did not buy any and moved on. I was sad about that. (I have made macarons twice). My trip to France was (on the food scale) an epic fail. My family and I plan to go again soon to try all the authentic foods found in the country.
Macarons come in all shapes in sizes, primarily in small, round, sandwich-like circles, and usually the filling is made of a ganache using all kinds of different chocolates, or buttercream, by creaming butter, sugar, and adding powdered sugar and other flavor elements. You can use dye and color the macarons differently, but the macaron-making process is a long, and hard one.
First, you have to whisk the egg whites (usually with a hand or stand mixer) until they’re thick and glossy, maybe about 3-4 minutes. When you pull your whisk out, there should be little peaks that form and stay. They should not droop to the side, or your macarons will be very liquid-y and not puffed up. When you are done whisking the egg whites (and slowly adding in the sugar), you have to, and MUST food process the almond flour and powdered sugar until there are NO LUMPS, and sift. This meticulous process is worth it- otherwise, your macarons become misshaped and uneven, yielding not Instagram-worthy macarons. Nobody likes to eat those kinds… (unless they taste really good on the inside) Anyway, after you pipe your macarons, you have to let them sit for at least 30 minutes or until your finger can lightly touch the top of the macarons and not be covered in macaron goo. Like this:
When baking, DO NOT OPEN THE OVEN! The macarons need heat to rise and form feet, so do not open the oven to check on them.
Finally, pipe your desired filling and enjoy! (I’m not going to give a whole overview, but here’s a recipe from the Cambridge School of Culinary Arts)
Macarons (makes 200):
20 egg whites (add 1 or 2 extra for chocolate macarons)
18 oz sugar (granulated)
24 oz almond flour
32 oz confectioners’ sugar (powdered)
Preheat oven to 325 ºF.
Place the almond flour and confectioners’ sugar into a food processor and blend together. Sift into a bowl large enough for mixing.
On high speed, beat egg whites in the bowl of a stand mixer using a whisk attachment. When egg whites reach soft peak stage, turn machine to low, and slowly add sugar. Turn mixer to medium speed and mix for approx. 10 minutes or until the whipped egg whites appear shiny and the sugar is dissolved.
Fold egg whites into the almond flour mixture using a spatula. At this stage, you can flavor or color the mixture to create assorted macarons.
Place parchemtn paper on a sheet pan and pipe small mounds that are approx. 1 in. apart using a pastry bag with a medium plain tip. Rest for 30 mins or until a finger can lightly touch the macaron shells without leaving a trace.
Bake for approx. 12 mins, or until the tops of the macarons are crusty. Remove from oven and let cool. Macarons will be assembled similar to a sandwich with assorted fillings.
Buttercream Filling (does not make enough to fill 200 macarons):
1 cup butter (2 sticks)
3 cups confectioners’ sugar (powdered)
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
3 tablespoons heavy cream
In a large bowl, add the butter and beat with a mixer for 1 minute until light and fluffy. Sift in the powdered sugar and beat until fully incorporated. Add the vanilla and beat to combine. Add the cream, 1 tablespoon at a time, and beat to combine, until desired consistency is reached.
Transfer the buttercream to a piping bag fitted with a round tip.
Add a dollop of buttercream to one macaron shell. Top it with another macaron shell to create a sandwich. Repeat with remaining macaron shells and buttercream.
Place in an airtight container for 24 hours to “bloom”.
Enjoy!
Or to make:
Coffee Ganache:
8 3/4 oz crème fraiche (or heavy cream)
4 1/2 oz sugar
3/4 oz coffee extract
1 lb milk chocolate, finely chopped
4 1/2 oz butter, creamed
Combine the crème fraiche, sugar, and coffee extract in a pot. Bring to a boil. Pour hot mixture over the chocolate and whisk to combine. Add creamed butter and mix to combine.
Repeat piping technique, but with ganache instead of the buttercream.
Enjoy!
(Best to freeze the macarons – if you refrigerate them, they will become gummy.)
Pâte à Choux –
Pâte à Choux is a specific way to make dough, used in pastries like cream puffs, eclairs, Paris-Brests, and churros. The dough starts out as butter in a pot, but then, once you add the milk, flour, and vanilla extract, it turns into a solid dough. Then you take the pot off of the stove to add eggs, so you don’t cook the eggs. (That would be… interesting…)
Cream puffs of all kinds – image linkParis-Brest (usually topped with sliced almonds) – image linkChocolate eclairs with vanilla pastry cream – image linkChurros and chocolate sauce – image link
Don’t have a recipe with me…. sorry!
Thanks for reading my quick guide to some French pastries!
So my first blog said a lot about going to Iceland… but as one very attentive follower told me… WHERE’S THE FOOD???!!!
Well here I am, today! Sadly, I have no picture to show you guys, so that’s disappointing, but I can recommend you!
I heard from the locals that there are a few pretty common grocery stores around here that have good Icelandic food!
BONUS
A very nice store, with a piggy bank as the “O” in BONUS. Their breakfast pastries are very traditional, with yellow and pink frosting coating the sides, and a custard cream filling, topped with chocolate shavings. While I was at the grocery store, we bought what we thought was milk, but it turned out to be a sort of yogurt milk, sour milk kind of drink. So be careful about that. This grocery store is also the best store for the best prices.
10-11
This grocery store is also pretty common, and it hosts a variety of convenience store food. There’s a lot of yogurt in all of the grocery stores, since Iceland has a lot of farms with cows and sheep. This grocery store is like the grocery store to just buy some stuff if you don’t have time and get out of there. But be careful – this store is very expensive for no reason…
Also, be really careful – don’t drink bottled water! All water, from the sink, to the showers, are all using natural spring water. Buying bottled water is just a waste of your Icelandic Krona, and stuff in Iceland is pretty expensive. Trust me. Just drink tap water. It’s better.
Onto the actual food! Here are some traditional food that you must get:
Lamb
No matter how it’s served, in a soup or a brisket, you must have lamb when you go to Iceland. Their lamb tastes nothing like the teeth wrenching, dead meat at home. That’s because they let their sheep and lambs out all throughout the summer, and let them free-roam in land that’s thousands of acres across. That way, the sheep are almost wild, and they get all these nutrients from the grass they eat and not artificial food. Maybe the US is too crowded for us to have good-quality lamb.
Skyr
I mentioned this in an earlier post, but Skyr, or Icelandic yogurt, is really good. They sell it here as well, but you have to get it in Iceland. Topped with some granola and fresh fruits, it’s so silky smooth and nice. They even have it as drinks! And you can get it in any flavor. They sell it everywhere in Iceland, just go to a store, or even a hotel sometimes has a little store that you can buy it from!
Hákarl
I haven’t had this yet, but Hákarl is fermented shark. For those of you who are not interested, like me, just scroll over this. But Hákarl is a traditional dish in Iceland where they cure the shark meat with a particular fermenting process, and hang it outside to dry for up to four or five months! It then gets a very strong ammonia smell and has a distinctive fishy taste…
Icelandic Fish
There are about 340 species of saltwater fish that have been recorded in Icelandic waters. Here are some of the most common species:
It’s… a lot. They also have some fish found in the rivers and lakes, such as Arctic char, Atlantic salmon, and brown trout.
You should eat as much fish as you possibly can when you are in Iceland. The fish are very healthy and fresh from the waters, so they taste really nice.Especially look for “fish of the day” on restaurant menus, since most fish on the menu are caught the day before!
“Best Hot Dogs” – Baejarins Beztu Pylsur
This restaurant was reported by Bill Clinton to have “the best hot dogs in the world”. These hot dogs are totally affordable, and though I haven’t tried one myself, you should get an opportunity to get a hot dog. (A friend also recommended them.)
Dark Rye Bread
This bread is not your normal type of bread. This bread is baked in the ground! Areas where hot springs are numerous also means volcanic activities. Not only are the hot springs warm and nice, the ground also absorbs some of that heat! The Icelanders use a special wooden casket that is buried in the ground to bake this bread! The taste is quite sweet, and the bread itself is crustless and quite dense as well. Great with butter, smoked salmon, mutton, smoked lamb, and pickled herring or cheese!
Baking Goods
You should always make a quick stop to a local bakery wherever you go. But in Iceland, there are some special pastry items that you should try out, just like how in France you have to eat at least one macaron. The Icelandic snúður is a soft cinnamon bun, usually with an icing topping. Usually good with coffee and a nice thing to wake up for in the morning.
Ice Cream
Icelanders are crazy for ice cream, just like I am! Some ice cream parlors are open until 1 am all-year round! There is also a wide variety of flavors in all parlors! Most ice cream is also homemade!
Molly Yeh is the descent of a Jewish and a Chinese, and she graduated from Julliard! How cool is that?
She incorporates a lot of her own culture and her husband’s culture into her food. She also is the star of Girl Meets Farm!, her own Food Network show!
Her recipes are down to earth, and downright delicious. Check her blog out!
Linda Lomelino is Swedish and lives in the southern part of the country.
She had no plan with her blog at first, in 2009. But over the years, recipes and photography started popping up, and she began to write and create magic on the website.
Her blog is filled with imagination and creativity, and it’ll trap you in its world.
I’m ZhuZhu Cai. I have just started blogging, and I’m a home baker. I’m also a student, and a writer. I love to hang out with cats, humans, cookies, and violins alike! Besides writing, I play piano and violin, and also socialize with my friends very often. I love to hike, to travel, and, of course, to eat! Desserts, that is! I’ve been to France, Canada, Iceland, and China. Next stop, England!
Baking is always the best! Macarons, especially! But it also leaves you with a lot of ganache…
Hi everyone! My name is ZhuZhu (pronounced like JuJu) Cai, and I’m excited to share with you new findings of food around the globe and great adventures! Let’s start with the most recent stuff!
I’ve been to many places, from Canada to China, and also to… Iceland!
Yup! That’s right! I’ve been to Iceland. Crazy, right? Just so you know, Iceland isn’t as icy as its namesake. It’s kind of… green? Brown? Something like that. Well, I had a pretty fun time in Iceland, eating warm noodles and waffles, and also having very good lamb! (It’s fresh from local farms!) You also can’t forget about the yogurt, or skyr, as they call it. (pronounced skeer) The biggest and most exciting thing in Iceland, of course, is the Northern Lights! Or Aurora Borealis. I went chasing the lights! Two nights without avail, but, like the saying, the third time’s the charm! The lights were beautiful, like green streaks someone painted using a paintbrush that was bigger than the Earth!
Here are some myths I heard along the way:
Apparently, in some places like Siberia and Northern Mongolia, there is a tale about the Northern Lights that says the lights were the tails of foxes that danced in the sky, leaving streaking trails of brightly colored ribbons of light in their path. Another myth, this one from Iceland and other Scandinavian countries, says that the Northern Lights represent the spirits of the dead, traveling along a river of iridescent greens, blues, and opalescent purples. How nice is that?
Also, in Iceland, I learned that there are a lot, and I mean, a LOT, of black sand beaches! Literally! The beaches are covered in black sand, coating the huge hexagonal columns that rise up to “meet the sky”! The hexagonal columns were said to be formed after volcanic eruptions and out of basalt! In Icelandic myths, these great columns of towering rock were once said to be large trolls that pushed ships out into the sea!
I am so happy to visit the same country where the Game of Thrones was filmed! It amazes me how wondrous and beautiful this small island is! I even got to climb a glacier!
(Though sadly, it is melting because of warming temperatures up north. I’m lucky to have seen it with my own eyes.)
I went to the capitol most of the time, and Reykjavik is a beautiful city. It’s really cool to visit local bakeries, pose in front of the beautiful Hallgrimskirkja, a towering Lutheran church with a unique organ count of 5275 pipes! That’s crazy!
All in all, you have to visit the natural hot springs in little pockets of Iceland, go on tours with great, friendly tour guides, and see the black sand beaches and puffins that circle high above for yourself. In Iceland, there’s always a place to relax, to entertain, and to just explore! “Þetta reddast”, as the Icelanders like to say, “things always have a way of working out in the end”!
Off the airplane and onto Iceland! Coming here for the first time was exciting! Northern Lights!! I know it’s bad resolution, but it’s better than nothing. You can’t just rely on the pictures. You’ve got to go see it for yourself. And this place, right in the parking lot of the two diverging plates, the Eurasian and the North American, has yummy hot waffles to serve up for tourists from all over the globe!Black sand beaches. These beaches can be really dangerous if you’re not careful. One wave is all it takes to steal someone’s life.Beautiful waterfront. And just look at that ship! It was for the sun god.What a beautiful sunset. Iceland is known for these! (If the weather is good. In Iceland, if you don’t like the weather, wait 5 minutes. It works!)This is the place where the divergent boundary is at. The North American plate and the Eurasian plate are pulling apart! The lake you see on the upper left side of the picture is No Man’s land!Waiting for the bus…
Beautiful Seljalandsfoss, a famous waterfall in Iceland. Just look at that rainbow! The towering Hallgrimskirkja, the Lutheran church just a short walk from the waterfront!
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Tasting the World 
