Cupcakes, Mini Cakes, and Cake Balls, Oh My!

How can a UT freshman not gain 15 pounds? UT grad students may have to worry about grad student 20 with all these dessert joints around Austin. I'm not a big cupcake or cake fan, so an occassional decadent mouthful doesn't worry me.

Polkadots Cupcake Factory

Polkadots Cupcake Factory offers interesting flavors and the prettiest cupcakes of them all, but the cake is a bit dry, and the portion is small for the price.

Strawberries and Cream Cupcake

Hey Cupcake

The flavors at Hey Cupcake do not impress me. However, the occassional vegan specials are pretty good.

Vegan Strawberry Cupcake and Vegan Orange Cupcake with Almond Frosting

Sugar Mama's Bakeshop

The winner for best cupcakes in Austin is Sugar Mama's Bakeshop. The cakes are moist, flavors are enticing, and the size is just right.

Black & Tan, Vegan Maple Walnut, Jack's Lemon, and Chocolate Chip Pumpkin

Whole Foods

Do not venture into the Whole Foods bakery and dessert section if you're on a diet. Although you can persuade yourself into buying just one mini cake, you'll likely end up buying one too many. I highly recommend the lemon poppyseed berry chantilly cake. AMAZING.

Banana Foster Cake, Lemon Poppy Seed & berries cake, mini eclairs, key lime pies, cookie sandwiches, and brownies

Holy Cacao

And then there's the new dessert trailer, Holy Cacao. I had my doubts about cake balls on a stick until I bit into one and discovered a creamy morsel of the grasshopper. The red velvet cake ball was equally yummy. I will leave out the s'more on my next visit. It was way too sweet.

assortment of cake balls and smore on a stick and half eaten grasshopper cake ball

Green Pastures Sunday Brunch

So I've been on a search for awesome Sunday Brunch in Austin. Back in Houston, the family would go out for brunch at The Omni Hotel every now and then. The Omni Hotel here looks old, so we highly doubt that the food would be any good. I haven't had time to actually eat Sunday brunches here, and I know that there's a few I should try like Lambert's, Trio, and Moonshine Grill.

In February, we tried out Green Pastures. The milk punch and tea-infused egg peaked my interest. I was especially curious about the tea-infused egg because I wondered whether it would taste like the Chinese tea-infused egg.

First off, Green Pastures is a great place to visit even if you don't plan on dining there. It's located in a quiet residential area in South Austin. Peacocks, including white ones, roam the grounds.

Green Pastures is very Southern with impeccable table setting and of course Southern hospitality. When we arrived at our table, the waiter offered us tropical punch, milk punch and rolls. The milk was like a naughty milkshake.

milk punch (brandy, bourbon, rum, Haagen Daz vanilla ice cream, and milk), tropical punch (orange, pineaple, and mango juice), and bread rolls

Of course I went straight for the tea-infused egg. Unfortunately, it tasted like a plain hard-boiled egg unlike the Chinese cha yie dan. From there, I had some savory pastries, salad, meats, fruits and cheese, and desserts. Everything was delicious, but nothing stood out. It was a standard and safe brunch. It's a great place to soak in the atmosphere of a lazy but elegant Sunday.

Tea-infused Egg and Spinach Quiche and a Pig in a Blanket

Caesar Salad and Tomato and Basil

smoked rainbow trout with pesto sauce, green beans with red peppers and leeks, and chilled seared duck breasts with orange marmalade, Shrimp with chipotle remoulade, bacon wrapped quail breast with jalepeno, smoked salmon, mussel, pork with avocado cream sauce, and beef tenderloin

Fruits and Cheeses


lemon bar, strawberry and marshmallow from the chocolate fountain, and chocolate pot de creme

Peacock Bar upstairs

cafe al fresco

Chilled Noodles

Spring is here; that means its time for cool, refreshing food! Whenever I'm in Taiwan, I have to have chilled noodles with garlicky sesame paste (liang2 mian4). It's so simple, yet so amazing. I hate how I can't get a bowl in the states...maybe in L.A....definitely in Vancouver...but certainly not in Texas. *Tear*

To temper my yearning, I make cold Korean crystal noodles and Japanese-style cold noodles. I don't use recipes, so my take is probably not authentically Korean or Japanese. Oh, and I don't use measurements. Everything is measured to taste.

Korean Crystal Noodles

Ingredients

Korean sweet potato noodles (boil and rinse with ice water)

green onions

minced garlic

dried small shrimp

grated daikon radish

sugar

soy sauce

sesame oil

sesame seed

Saute daikon radish, garlic, green onions, and dried shrimp until cooked, and set aside to cool. Mix sugar, soy sauce, sesame oil, and a couple drops of water until the sugar dissolves. Once the sauteed mixture has cooled, dump the sauce mixture on the strained chilled noodles and toss the noodles until coated. Add the sauteed mixture, and sprinkle sesame seeds.

You can saute any veggie mixture to go with the noodles.

Cold Green Tea Noodles

Ingredients

Noodles

green tea noodles (boil and rinse with ice water)

grated carrots

soba sauce

sesame oil

lemon juice

Cucumber Salad

slice any type of cucumbers

Japanese rice vinegar

pinch of salt

even smaller pinch of sugar

Five-spice Chicken

any part of the chicken and marinate in the following for a day or two:

Chinese five-spice

any kind of wine

some soy sauce

For the noodles, just mix the strained noodles together with soba sauce, sesame oil, and some lemon juice, and leave the grated carrots for garnish. Toss the cucumber salad ingredients together in a bowl. Bake, grill, or pan fry the chicken.

You can make any meat and veggie side to go with the noodles.

Dim Sum

National Palace Museum Restaurant (Taipei, Taiwan)-afternoon dim sum

Dim Sum (ying3 cha2 or yum cha) is for breakfast, brunch, or Chinese afternoon tea, but over time it has evolved into a proper meal. The incredible variety induces you to order enough dishes to fill your tummy unlike the Western afternon tea selection of 3: tea sandwiches, scones, and mini pastries.

The standard dishes at any dim sum restaurant are: ha gao (steamed shrimp dumplings with rice wrapper), shu mai (steamed pork), luo buo gao (pan-fried turnip cake with Chinese sausage), cha shao bao (steamed or baked Chinese BBQ pork bun)

(a dim sum restaurant in Chicago)-Ha Gao and Shu Mai

(a dim sum restaurant in Chicago)-Luo Buo Gao

From there, you can venture into the safe zone or the more adventurous.

Let's start with the tasty safe dishes: pan-fried shrimp-stuffed eggplants, fried or steamed tofu topped with shrimp, fried or steamed bean curd skin rolls filled with pork and bamboo shoots, steamed sticky rice, egg custards, pudding, all sorts of buns, rice porridge, all sorts of dumplings, steamed pork ribs in black bean sauce, chilled noodles filled with shrimp or pork in soy sauce, fried taro paste filled with ground pork, eggrolls with a variety of fillings, bell peppers pan-fried with shrimp. This list can go on forever.

(a dim sum restaurant in Chicago)-Pan-fried Shrimp-stuffed Eggplants and Shrimp Eggrolls (foreground) with Fried Taro Paste with ground pork (back)

Now to the bold, exciting stuff. N.B. Do not make faces and cringe at food that's not common in your cuisine. It may be exotic or even offensive to you, but it's a culinary norm for others. I have my limits too; many times my mental capacity for certain food consumption stops short. Everyone draws the line somewhere unless you're Andrew Zimmerman, and even the mighty Zimmerman met his match in Taiwan's stinky tofu.

Some dishes that had always been part of our dim sum repertoire are: phoenix talons (chicken feet), beef tripe, and coagulated pork's blood.

(a dim sum restaurant in Chicago)-Beef Tripe and Phoenix Talons

Chicken feet is really all about eating chicken skin. That's not at all unusual, right? Plenty of people eat the skin from fried chicken. The only other thing about chicken feet is the tendon on the pad of the feet.

I loved beef tripe and pork's blood as a kid. Then I found out what they were, and I hit a mental block. Tripe has a good snap and has convenient pockets for holding yummy sauce. Pork's blood looks like brown tofu (that's exactly what I thought when still ignorant) and tastes kinda like tofu but won't give as easily when you gently press down on it with your teeth. The sauce makes this dish, just like with any tofu dish.

The best dim sum restaurant in Austin is Chinatown on Mopac. There's great variety, and the presentation is often times superior to dim sums in Hong Kong and Taiwan. You can taste how the ingredients they use here are fresher than others in Austin. However, Chinatown serves quite a few dishes that are American-Chinese and thus not dim sum fare during their dim sum hours. They are also more expensive than the standard dim sum restaurants in the U.S.

Chili Oil and Shrimp Dumplings

<
Sticky Rice-filled with ground pork and mushrooms and Ground Pork Wrapped with Bean Curd Skin

Fried Tofu with Shrimp and Steamed Tofu with Shrimp

Desserts: Fermented Sticky Rice Cakes and Mochi filled with red bean paste

Homecooked Chili Dinner

What's the best medicine to cure school pains? A study group dinner! The menu consisted of Spinach Salad with blueberries, fried garlic mashed with roasted macademia nuts, dressed in vinaigrette and Turkey Chili with corn, beans, and scallions. Friends brought cornbread, drinks and desserts.

My gourmande friend noted that the salad could be a bit more tangy. I agree. I blame the vinaigrette, but otherwise, this is one awesome salad. The fried garlic mashed with macademia adds a crunchy texture to the spinach, which by itself contributes less crisp than iceberg lettuce or romaine.

Spinach Salad-with blueberries, fried garlic mashed with roasted macademia nuts

I wanted to make a less fatty chili, so I used ground turkey and lean chicken sausage. I love corn so I dumped a can of it into the crock pot of sautéed meats, spices, beans, a bottle of Shiner, and tomato purée. I'm a texture kind of eater, so once again, the corn accents the otherwise mushy texture of chili with sweet crunches.

Turkey Chili-with ground turkey, chicken jalepeno sausage, beans, corn, and scallions topped with B.D.'s cornbread

To be honest, I hate cornbread. B.D.'s cornbread was yummy, so it made me rethink cornbread. My biggest complaint against cornbread is that it's dry. It usually feels like I'm eating sand. My mission was to make cornbread moist and enhance its sweetness. I think I found one way to do it, but I'm not going to give out my recipe!

Honey Banana Corn Bread